9/22/2011

2/26/2013 4:19 PM

33

0

1 win / 2 losses

Architect

Finishing School

unpublished

We're always told that being in school is the best time of your life. But it's not. This is by no means a school adventure. This isn't any sort of epic story with a happy ending, at least not the true ending. This is just life as an outcast and basket case, when they grow up and realize that life isn't as hard for them as people tell them it would be.

Reasonably major spoiler warning below.

Your character in game isn't schizophrenic as such, he suffers from social anxiety and the stress of past events channels all his bitter thoughts into another person, the one he used to be. During the events of the game he may become more prominent or less. The more you hear him the worse you're feeling, and living with dispair won't be easy.

Noticing the lack of technologically based heroes:

Name: Hivemind.exe

Power source: Science

Powers: Ability to manufacture and control countless droids. Each is just a typical infantry unit, just a proton blaster rifle mounted on one arm, while physically quite strong, nothing that can't be destroyed like any conventional soldier. Hivemind wins battles through sheer numbers, and the psychological intimidation of facing down infinite waves of robots.

Backstory: Who'd have thought that the first AI created would conform to ancient psychological principles? When a dynasty long since past noticed the civil unrest, and the inefficiency of martial law to put down riots in the streets, the answer was simple. The future was paved with silicon and transistors, and who better to guard it than a machine.

So they called on every man of science available. From the highest government robotic engineer, to the average university lecturer. Every an had a part to play in building a better future. In a place torn apart by riots and terrorism, with human protectors unable to maintain control, their one hope was to build a weapon which could combat every last dissident, to force people to bow down to power. There's only so many men you can send to march to their death before their comrades lay down arms. But a machine knows no fear, no mercy.

Unfortunately for them, the AI they ended up with was much too human for their liking. But what were they to do? The country was torn apart, and any hesitation would surely lead to collapse.

They built installations for this system. Plants where the AI could build MP units, for deployment into hotzones. Controlled by a single entity, a machine which could function immeasurably faster than a human. No communication errors, no bad judgments. Just perfect timing, perfect style, perfect execution. Every last time.

Of course, build a factory to make police robots, and someone's going to throw a spanner in the works. Or more likely, high explosive charges. Every time they built their brainchild a new home, they were evicted by the rebels and revolutionaries.

But it was their only hope. Hesitation meant extinction. All hope rided on this machine. Every resource went into bringing the plan to fruition.

Revolutionaries are always the underdogs. They lack the weapons that the ruling class has. After all, guns and bombs win a war. But the country was in tatters. Even military bases were overrun on occasion. When rebels have tanks and fighter jets, what can up that?

Inter-Planetary ballistic missiles. The decline of the regime began with fear of the unknown. Aliens specifically. Apparently, the regime encountered irrefutable proof of life off Aetherius. And they were terrified. Huge missiles were constructed. Basically space rockets with fuel for a one way trip and the extra space filled with enough explosives to level a hemisphere.

The alien war never came. And after all the resources wasted, unrest was paces behind.

But the Government saw these missiles, and built a factory on a moonlet high above the world. The wonderful thing about the AI system was its ability to adapt to new situations. It was self-maintaining, easily capable of running the factory without human input. Raw materials harnessed straight from the moonlet. They just needed a little time for the plant to redesign the droids to be able to return planetside without going splat.

Unfortunately, they'd been running on borrowed time too long, and their credit had gone bad.

Whatever happened, by the time the AI had created its army, it'd lost its cause. The regime had crumbled. As had everything within a thousand miles of the country. Perhaps the rebels had intended to destroy the new installation with the missiles, perhaps it was a dead man's switch implemented by its creators. The fact was everything had gone. And here sat a computer and its army floating above the graveyard of its past.

Even artifical intelligence gets lonely.

By the time it had focused on Aetherius again, it saw a new civilization. Greater than the machine's creators. A world of wonder. Yet it saw the same terror that faced the fathers. Dissent and war.

Maybe it was too late to serve its purpose. But it could still do some good.

 

My major beef with AI's in sci-fi is that they always turn evil. Every setient robot sees some twisted logic which makes it okay to harm it's creators. A child feels no resentment towards its parents. Just because a machine thinks doesn't mean it thinks differently. Also, all AI's are sane. No robot ever develops personality defects, beyond psychosis of course.

No human would set out to make a defective machine, but with AI, you can't control it.

The reason I think this character would work is firstly, robots raining from the sky in droves makes for a hell of an action sequence. But at the same time, it seems incredibly overpowered.

Which is why it's needy. It wants the attention. Sure, you wipe out all evil people. Hurrah. Now you've no purpose. You fight evil a moderate pace, you drag out the celebration, and the respect and the gratitude.

Well, I could probably script it, never actually got around to finishing my stories, but I've messed around with the variables enough to get a pretty good understanding of them. I ended up with about 4 or 5 variables, 2 of them hidden, and it was working fine on the thirty pages I had written. I'm sure you could easily do it yourself too, because I'm not the most tech-savvy person in the world and I figured it out with only a little help from the forums. Items, personally, I would stay away from. I don't like using them, probably my only fault with Homo Perfectus, reliance on items. It's just a pain in the arse when I have to click on every item in my inventory to figure out what to do next. It is possible with hidden variables to have pretty much the same effect, but it's incorporated into the story. For instance, in the story you pick up a newspaper, you could have a hidden variable called 'NEW' increase by one and that can open a new link on a page where use of a newspaper is appropriate. It's a little more complicated, and the reader may forget what they have collected up until then, but it's much more fluid.

EDIT: Essentially, what I'm saying is if you ask me to script for you, then you will not have items. I don't like them and I'd never use them in a story I worked on. However, seeing as how I'm actually really excited about this game, if you choose to get someone else to do it I would still like to offer help wherever I can. :)

And don't worry about rushing it out mate, Endmaster isn't churning out stories at the rate of Stephen King and everyone still loves him.

Yes, to the map making as well, bit late I know, but ya'never know, might turn out to be useful. :)

Don't just say bump, just tell us any thoughts of what's happening with the world and story.

Name: Soria Rane

Power Source: Charles Atlas Superpowers

Powers: Exceptional marksmanship, other than that she's just an extremely fit human, with a survivalist mentality.

Bio: The way Soria saw it, she didn't have long left. Every day she saw glimpses of a world going to shit. The next stage of human evolution had been and gone, when the next door neighbour can lift up buildings with ease, suddenly, being handy with a rifle didn't mean much. Regardless of humanity's finest, the world boasted sentient AI's, machines that surpassed the human mind in unfathomable ways. Chosen who could pull the dust from the ground and turn it into golems, or turn the forests into ash as a afterthought. No, her doomsday clock counted the seconds down to midnight, and boy, does time fly.

Ten years before her birth, her father saw it coming. The end of the world was coming, and if you're going to die, why bother dying in luxury when you could be shitting in the woods and cleaning up with poison oak? Her father died before she reached two, so she never got why he chose this life for his family. Her mother followed her husband to the end of the earth (Aetherial plain? Idk how you would reference that) and for whatever reason she decided to stay after his death. It was a big family, with numerous brothers and sisters to keep Soria company.

So as she grew up in the wilderness, she learnt to hunt, to farm, to track. But where she really shone was shooting. Sure, she had no real competition, just a few family members, to compare her skills with, but every chance she got, she was out hunting. For the good of her family. That was how she was raised. Her father's mantra, the one thing that stuck by them, justification of the hard work it was just to survive out here. It's how you do it.

As she reached 18, she had the talk with her mother. She dreaded the day. Her four older brothers had had that talk on their birthdays, and a week later they had completely changed.

She could leave the farm.

The thing is, bullets are the one thing you can't farm. That's what the town on the other side of the mountain was for. After living her life with no human interaction outside her family, the whole world was open to her.

That weekend she discovered what alcohol was, what sex was. She also learnt what humanity was. She'd spent her life believing that the world would end. But on visiting civilisation, she wished the end would come. The whole world seemed to be oblivious to the danger, yet poised, waiting for it. People hung to TV screens, watching bank robbers vaporize neighbouring skylines, watching greater people than she could ever be fight and kill millions, and then continue on their commute.

She returned like her brothers, stoic, silent. She knew that she would take the mantle as the family's link to the outside world. She was just more suitable to make the hike to town than her brothers. Faster, better equipped to handle the trek. She laughed at it all. Here she was, the alpha of the boonies, just a speck in comparison to the bringers of the end.

Thing is, her little sister Tamara, she left before she was old enough. Ran away at 16 in the dead of night, first stop, Hicksville, secod stop, who knows? She didn't see the horror waiting around the corner, she just saw her go-nowhere life and figured anything would be better.

Soria wasn't one for reflection, she was a woman of action. Her beliefs were set in stone, she wanted no part of a world seconds away from extinction. But she wanted to help her sister.

Weeks later, she found her, in some non-descript city. What she saw broke her heart. Tammy had fit in. She was living a boring life like everyone else. She would never return home now. The only thing Soria could think to do was protect her little sister. The family could cope just fine back home, living as they'd always done. She woud stay, tracking flesh and blood can't be any harder than a deer, and keep her safe at all times. That's how she was raised, for the good of the family. If her sister wanted to live in a doomed world, Soria would have to hold off the apocalypse a little longer.

The videos you see on TV, where some madman floods a city just for a bit of fear and money, with all those innocents running and screaming and dying? It's easy to forget about those people. Someones sister, mother, friend, lover. Those people, one of the countless dead of the 30 minute news segment, meant the world to someone. It's the life anyone not blessed with money or powers must face. Sure, not all of them have an overprotective, bullet-rich family member as a guardian angel, but they all end up as Jane Does.

There were just too many close calls though. A bank robbery, a necromancer bringing up hordes of undead. But problems that can be solved with a well placed bullet. But she had to get past her mentality that her family came first. Everyone has a family, no one deserves help more than another. Sure, she wouldn't invite all of humanity around for the holidays at the farm, but she would do her best to fight on behalf of those who are reduced to background figures, or obituary listings. Maybe she didn't have the ability to fly, or conjure fire, but she had a rifle, and a mission. Maybe she is a shining relic of a redundant species, but she was willing to give up her life to ensure the survival of her people. Even the superhuman fall to bullets. That'll be her new family's mantra. Being outgunned doesn't rule you out of the fight.

 

This one was much more rushed than my previous character, so I'm not surprised if the writing is disjointed or otherwise much worse. Firstly, I'm disappointed how all the suggestions are so incredibly overpowered. Not everyone can be a superhero.

Secondly, in regards to the character. She's a good girl, she is fighting for humanity. Not so much in the superhero way, where they feel an obligation to protect the weak, more in a xenophobic way where she wants to protect te human race. She sees the evolved as a higher form of human, but at the same time, she hates the treatment of the common person. Villians kill humans for fun, or to prove a point, heroes just seem indifferent to all the death and destruction and fight because they feel a moral obligation to fight 'evil'. So I suppose she's somewhat of an anti-hero, even though she fights for a just reason.

:O Surprisingly? Of course he's epic. That's how you need all characters to be. He shouldn't be like the endgame, just kinda of like Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. Not the Big Bad, just an unrelated bad guy, whose no less awesome, just a little less screen time.

Also, I tried to edit the last part, but you replied to it first. In summary, his nanobots build armor around him. If he thinks about it, he could weaponize it. Firstly like exploding, as shown in my first post, or covering his fists in iron, which would essentially be like brass knuckles, but heavier, or diamond or something for cutting power, but he can't make a sword or gun out of nowhere. I suppose he could eject oxygen at a fast enough rate, and using a lighter he could use it as a short range flamethrower, or synthesize TNT and use it to make bombs later. Or Caesium, if he coated in oil as it was formed, use it as a depth charge. He's not like a munitions expert, but he has some knowledge from his biomed course, and if it's relatively simple, and he knows the formula, the nanobots can build it.

Really, the lack of impulses is due to what the ectoderm tissue does. it develops into neurons, skin, and tooth enamel, as mentioned near the start. It's also why I mention he has false teeth. I don't know if you've noticed with tumors, but while the cell grows and grows all the other cells around it die. It'd be the same with the baby, the part of this tissue that develops into skin got malignant, so the tooth and neuron part got weak, and he miraculously mutated and survived regardless. While he doesn't feel anything, he's not superpowered in that aspect. He still bleeds and gets tired.

And it's not shapeshifting per say, because it's not his skin that's changing, it's the nanobots building things ontop of him. He can't make a fake face on top of his own, I suppose he could just cover his face in carbon if he wants to protect his identity.

As I mentioned in my reply to Stryker, regeneration is useless, it'd protect against anything less than skin deep, if you stabbed him with his guard down, he'd die.

Well, perhaps it's kind of a symbiotic relationship. Without his regenerative abilities, his nanobot syrup couldn't harvest his skin without actually killing healthy cells, but at the same time without the nanobots his power is useless. also, one could say that being a meth baby and his coke addiction are synonymous with Bruce Banner's gamma technology and a reverse Dr. Jekyll potion, just a lot darker. The mutation of his cells in utero were caused by technology, and the cocaine is used to activate nerve impulses.

So while he has mutagenic powers, it's really technologically based.

Kaleb Sherman

Power Source: Mutation, augmented by science.

Powers*: rapid regeneration of dermal cells. Reduced nerve impulses. Lack of teeth. (due to mutations) Ability to change dermal cells into any other elements or molecules. Or in laymans terms, he regenerates skin tissue fast enough that nanobots can change the tissue into other materials without causing any damage to him.

Bio: Kaleb didn't have the greatest start to life. His mother was a meth addict, and after her son was conceived, the baby developed malignant growth in his ectodermal tissue. Now, being a destitute drug addict, she had no idea, but with a faulty Ectoderm, any kid can expect to find skin doesn't develop correctly, nor nervous tissue, nor tooth enamel. And death, most likely. But for all the damage chemicals can do, sometimes nature can find a way.

So after the typical, bloody childbirth, the midwife picks up the baby and gives it a slap. No cry, no reaction, nothing. So they chalk this one up to mental retardation due to substance misuse, pass the baby to the patient, and go for lunch. They return to the cries of the mother. The baby looked flaky. Not twenty minutes old and he was shedding skin. Far too much. Touching the child, it came away in your hands, layers of it, leaving fresh, oily skin underneath.

No. Not the greatest start to life.

Growing up is pretty much what you'd expect. Taken away from the mother and placed in state care. the kid seemed to eat far too much, but at the rate he shed skin, it was understandable. It used to be they'd wash him every two or three hours, but the carers couldn't keep that up forever. His teeth came and went by his second birthday. Any other kid would find the pain unbearable, but little Kaleb didn't seem too fussed. He got older, and they kept him away from other children. Only a few of the long-term carers could stand to be around him, and kids can be cruel, to say the least. The kid wasn't disabled after all, any more than someone with acne is disabled. He had very few reflexes, and he couldn't feel anything, but his mind worked just fine. So after 'homeschooling' he was ready for reintroduction into general life. Sure, he didn't emotionally develop, and he had to wear false teeth, he had to wipe excess skin off visible body parts every few minutes. But he would have to cope with it.

You know how they say that youth is the best time of your life. Being a freak doesn't change that. He had no friends, no chance at love. Sure, back in care they didn't tell you all the things you'd grow up to not have, but the real world has a way of showing you these things anyway. So he turned to education. Now, he wasn't the brightest spark, but having nothing else to do gives you a chance to fixate on your work. So he enrolled at a college, studying biological medicine.

Semesters passed, he worked. He had no time for classmates, they were disgusted by him, under their transparent fake sympathy. He just worked. Then one night, he was researching thesis ideas. He stumbled onto some information about a Dr. Faust. Now, he had no interest in superheroes, he was working as hard as he could just so he could be a normal person. He hated the idea of magic, nothing good could come of it. Give anyone power like that? Why else would the world need superheroes, other than to stop more powerful people. He could see the worst in regular humans, the vanity, greed, the chaos. Making anyone better was just going to amplify the evil.

But this Dr. Faust, beneath the clichéd villainous actions, was a great man. Misunderstood perhaps, his work on nanobots could be the answer to Kaleb's problems.

So he got to work. Replicated the design. Developed a suitable medium. Perhaps Kaleb knew what he was doing was dangerous, and he didn't care either way. He wanted to be normal. Human.

Two months before his graduation, he was complete. Billions of nanobots held in a silica gel that he could coat his body with. They would break down the dead cells, and rearrange the molecules to release as harmless gasses. The silica gel would stop his skin getting burnt by chemical conversion, and aside from having shiny skin, he'd look normal.

Unfortunately, after graduation, he realised that the stuff he was doing in school costs alot of money. The nanobots and silica gel are expensive. As life changing as his work was to him, his classmates were developing augmentations that would get lots of people killed. No prizes for guessing who got kept on as post graduates. On top of this, due to his faulty nervous system, he needed stimulants to run as a normal person. And while cocaine may be expensive, it's sure cheaper than the stuff government agencies put in little vials to make better, faster soldiers. So between his coke addiction, and desire to live a normal life, he needed money.

Turns out, those nanobots can convert the waste materials into anything. And the silica can transmit quite alot of energy. So stealing a neural interface converter from school, he managed to figure out a way to control the nanobots. They can convert all those molecules into anything. Energy for nuclear fusion wasn't a problem, because he radiated energy.

So one night he broke into a bank. He turned his fingertips into diamond and clawed his way through steel. He grew an exoskeleton of iron to support his body as he dragged away sums of money he'd never dreamed of. He covered himself in lead and bodychecked police officers who tried to apprehend him. He was unfazed. He was waiting for the cavalry. The thing about superheroism is that it isn't basic economics. When supers take down mob bosses, people aren't stupid enough to jump into drugs trafficking just because there's a greater demand. Being a superhero is the new unemployment, and anyone looking for a ticket to the big leagues will jump on a bank robbery.

Sure enough, some idiot flies in on a fireball.
"I am Sunburn!" Self promotion at it's finest, "Put the money down and walk away peacefully, and I shall not harm you!"
'Everything these heroes say is soaked in narcissism. It's disgusting. Why pretend you fight for good, when you drown us in your ego'. Kaleb had no hatred for these people. Only pity. They just relished being freaks.

Turns out Sunburn wasn't very astute. He tried casting a fireball. The air burst into flames.

Kaleb woke with a start. Everything around him was blackened ash. For blocks around, everything was scorched. And soaked. Chemistry 101, hydrogen is tiny and flammable. And being so small, his nanobots released alot of it. Perhaps the silica absorbed the heat. Perhaps it was the nanobots. No point in questioning the laws of the universe, people broke them everyday for a living.

Speaking of which, scores of policemen, and Sunburn had vanished. Presumably obliterated by the explosion. Along with his money from the bank haul. Kaleb sighed, and hoped this wouldn't be a regular occurrence. He was just trying to help people. To be normal. People die. They died because a superhero tried to burn to death a bank robber. He wasn't guilty, he just wanted to help.


AAANNNNDDD SCENE! Assuming the forums let me post that, that's my contribution to your game. Obviously, he's a bad guy, and I labeled him as both mutagenic and technology based, because his powers are a result of trying to cure his mutations through technology. He's not so much a greedy villain as opposed to 'He hates what he thinks superheroes are, just vain selfish do-gooders' villain. You're welcome to use as little or as much of this as you want. Just if he does die, make it cool, have him kill of a relatively established superhero first. Something sad to get the reader to hate him. Granted I haven't proofread this, so it may need some editing

I was actually about to create a concise version of what I thought I had already put across, then I saw the part where you were being an asshat. There's a debate and there's being a cunt. You're more eloquent than me, congratulations. That doesn't mean you're right. Spare me your psychoanalysis. I don't presume to know anything about you, and you're probably going sit there reading this as 'BAWW HE GUESSED ME TO T'. Do what you like mate, you're known for exactly this thing on this forums. Like the scourge of anyone who disagrees with you on the forums. I salute you sir. But to be honest, I couldn't give n>1 number of shits about all this. You proved to be the winner of a debate by boring your opponent and nitpicking. A great day. And yet, you haven't actually persuaded me on any matter other than I was using words in the wrong context. A great victory no less though, you can masturbate at the thought of destroying another man. TLDR I'm nearly on the scene with the lesbian evil ex. And am in no mood to comment on this. Just chalk it up as an even more resounding Bo win than it was already turning out to be.

Was tempted to TL:DR this after a long day at work, but seeing as how you clearly made the effort.. Even if I was trying to watch Scott Pilgrim. I'll save the star wars geek-off for after I'm warmed up. So I'll go to the jews for the moment. Well Hitler was a (to the germans) a charismatic man, that only gets you so far. It'd be easy for us to say that the afghans are all terrible people and deserved to be nuked, I, as a Brit, have never met an afghan, and if I were a little less skeptical, I might believe that they are as evil as everyone makes out. That'd just be plain old propaganda. But in Germany back in the 1930's, Jews weren't ellusive. They could be the neighbourhood doctor, the friendly old man next door, the shopkeeper, or your coworker. It's all very well saying people you've never met are evil, but people you've known for years? That's how cognitive dissonance build the sneaky, manipulative jew stereotype. After all, if the government ingrained anti-semitism into you, and yet you know them as the people who live peacefuly beside you, to avoid that dissonance, you say both facts are true, because the jews were trying to manipulate the whole time. I never specified that it was the reason behind the Holocaust, that was just you reading to much into it. And I wasn't playing the Hitler card, seeing as how Gobbels would be more to blame, my great-grandmother was a jewish refugee, and I researched it for my psychology project in school last year. I didn't even mention Hitler. As with me trying to U-turn on my points on anti-heroicism, as I mentioned. Posting takes a long time on a semi-broken android phone. Even as I type the page seems to be wobbling all over the place trying to follow my typing. So you have to understand a post from me of the previous lengths takes a long time. If shit got mentioned that contradicted the next point I was to make, that'd be because I haven't seen the post. If however you are talking about you and Sindriv saying your villians should have emotional backstories and shit, that's completely different. Don't copy from the dictionary and say that proves a point, so you can hold a minor victory over semantics, that's the applied version of me doing that evil snigger from worms and saying 'you made a spelling mistake, so fuck you'.the fact is, Vader stops being a villian is wholly relevent. He's not a morally grey antagonist, or a marionette. He tries to kill his own son. And then we suddenly empathise with him because he gets angry when someone else tries to do it? He's still a complete cunt, and the fact that he rejoins the light side at the end is ridiculous. I don't even like t o think about that part. 'Oh, you murdered billions of people for some old douchebag? Tried to kill your own son after he refused to suck that old man's cock too? This old man transpiring to be the one who purged the Jedi order in the first place.. Oh, but you saw sense at the end? We are as brothers..' The fact of the matter is, if up until that point, and the part where he wants Luke to join him, he shows no mercy, and that according to you, would make him dull. Don't think your eloquence can make that dissappear.. He is throughout the old trilogy, a mass-murdering team-killing, asshole. Granted, at the end, there's some retrospective guilt and he somehow becomes a jedi again and my phone is too shit to show me any text past here, so new post,