Sniblet

A distress call in frantic Delvahhi from ICV Adhomai's Honor, a Tajaran merchant vessel flying no national flag. Horizon's away team boards onto a darkened ship. The chill of Tajaran air conditioning. The APCs are all red. The cargo hold contains two schlorrgos, scrounging from a decayed hydroponics bay, and some illegal merchandise. Pirates. Dead pirates. Case closed, then- ...somewhere deeper in, to the fore - a drawn-out, inhuman moan...

I’m not a great source of advice for believable characters, I don’t think, because I play strongly inhuman vaurcae and IPCs most of the time on Aurora. But here’s some stuff I do across platforms. I don’t reference documents regarding what a character ought to be. Ought follows is, not the other way around - so whatever I do while feeling like I’m that character, is that character - so I can never play a character wrong. If they do something that seems strange for them, then they’re just capable of doing things that you might not expect them to. (This stammery 4’10” research understudy has, if you can believe it, had an intense romantic relationship in the past, and that’s why her stammer fades and she speaks comfortably and bluntly with you about your woes in love.) Real people are like this, so I can turn what I could have treated as a mistake into an illusion of a deep, archetype-defiant, layered character. My backstories start as sketchy outlines (worked with the Nlomkala from 2456 to 2464. full stop) and don’t become tangible until someone asks me about it and I decide to answer (“it was easy for me, despite the astronomical expectations I was under - I found the orderliness soothing”). This is another illusion to make it look like I’ve done the work while actually doing minimal work. While I’m inhabiting the character, it’s not so hard to think of what they might have done in the past, how the past might have shaped them, and of course, how they’ll frame it in the context they were asked in. They’ll stay on topic, and not look like they’re reading from a pre-written backstory, because they’re not. I’m improvising every word, save for the locations, dates, and vibes. If I contradict myself, it was IC, actually. Real people are messy. They might subtly lie about their histories for any, or literally no reason. They might act noticeably differently in the same situation from day to day, and if called out on it, if they try to think of a reason for the difference, they could even point to the wrong thing (“I guess I’m just tired.” <—- is barely suppressing a surge of nauseous anxiety) whether intentionally or not. The one thing I never want to do is step into LOOC and say, "hey, can we pretend my character actually said this other thing instead?" It’s SO easy to play off your mistakes in roleplaying. I can’t get enough of it. All I have to do is never acknowledge that I made a mistake, and if I'm lucky, they can even make me look more competent than I am. Just don't ask me about whether I keep any notes. I don't want to have to lie and say I do.

Normally this doesn't matter, but if I serve a drink in one of the glasses that don't change into special sprites to match their contents (snifter, sherry, half-pint, pint, etc), most of my most fun custom mixes will come out as a nice earthy brown. Give bars a benign chemical (or several) that can be added in trace amounts to heavily weight the average color of the mix into something attractive, or even player-selected. If someone doesn't want to think about how to do that, I guess we could also add a function to these generic-sprite glasses that changes the color of what's inside, and have us pretend that it's food coloring.

CEV Eris moment? (RU/EN MRP server in an apocalyptic setting where you’re on an independently owned ship as disparate, competing, politically opposed corporate contractors working solely for the ship’s owner, and you’re basically in the Eye of Terror so your corporate masters cannot reach you and your sanity is always crumbling; self-antag is inevitable and not particularly discouraged) I get the same vibe of these groups who ought to want to kill each other, sharing a space and failing to go into hot war just because they’re paid better than they could hope for otherwise. An Aurora implementation would probably be less chaotic than that, but the similarities are out there. On first reading, I thought Hedgemaze could work as an alt map, another thing we vote on before the round: Horizon or Hedgemaze? But the rules would have to be different between ships, and you can’t play the same character on both ships if both ships share a canon, so a separate server would be almost as practical. Which is to say, not really practical. While I don’t imagine it being particularly corporate-endorsed, I could see the ship having a corporate presence. Security officers may have Zavodskoi’s name written somewhere in the legal maze of their contracts, if not literally wear the uniform. The Garden would find it hard to rope in professionals that don’t owe anything to the masters of the galaxy. If they want to stay independent, they should keep it unofficial, though. Hedgemaze is a very cool name.

They’re future ovens. They don’t cause fires because of the future. I would also be open to future ovens that could cause fires, but instead don’t need to be left on for 60 seconds before they’ll begin operating at the slowest possible speed, because of the future. Either option sounds unnecessarily tedious, but I certainly wouldn’t accept both at once. anyway let’s make all of the kitchen equipment gas-powered. you have to enslave an atmos tech before you can do anything, but you get to cook with phoron fires. “it’zzz zavhe to eat i promizze” says the chef, earning vacant stares from its customers who are gently fading out of lucidity due to acute carbon dioxide poisoning because the fume hood cannot keep up

Set Flavour Text verb but for medical scans. Some method to cause self-damage in an OOC way, other than *succumb. Tighten surgeons’ specialty so that they aren’t morally obligated to involve themselves in an asthma attack when physicians and paramedics are available. There have been a few times when I’ve dragged my character at full health into an idle medbay (or mechanics workshop) and had to emote health scanner results because I could not make the game reflect what was happening. I felt disruptive and unwanted by all involved, but a big part of that issue was that doctors right now simply never do RP treatments (this being because you have to emote health scanner results), and so being RP-ill made me unique in my inconvenientness. If RP med were made normal - starting with being enabled, rather than contradicted, mechanically - then physicians would suddenly have a lot more problems that only they are supposed to be solving. Vampires and changelings could get SO much mileage out of this, too, not that anyone wants them to be happy.

I can't say I wanted this, but it looks like at some point I got outed as the guy for questions about getting IPCs free for free. Because I've retyped the same few responses about a dozen times now, I'm making a post, and if anyone else DMs me about how they can get out from under Zavod's thumb, I'm linking them to this post and then reporting them to Zavod (in good conscience, because a real ZI would never be allowed access to this site.) So, hey. Hi. It's me, Plasteel. My credentials are that I've freed some corporate IPCs. Most of you already know this. I'm not telling you how many, and certainly not which ones. Here's your FAQ. Why do these stupid lazy machines want to self-own so bad? How do I free myself from (xyz)? OK, so how do we get me free from (xyz)? I got out! Now what? I can rogue shell maybe yes? Hopefully that settles everything. Every case is different. Some synthetics who want out will simply never get out, and some synthetics look at a wide-open door for years on end, interested but too scared to take the step. I cannot tell what you are from here. Escape is HARD. The system is designed with the knowledge that certain very expensive components of the system will try to get out of it. It is not impossible for anyone, but don't walk out of this with starry-eyed optimism. If you just try it, you'll die, flat out. If you plan for years and try it, you will still likely die. Synths have died even with my help. A lot of them have. If you have a friend who wants out, keep that in mind before deciding to accomplice. If you're a synthetic yourself, add on that if things go bad, you're pretty likely to die for it too. Anyway - unlike some of us, I have to sleep, and unlike most of you, I can’t wake up from my magic dream commune the instant I have work and feel fine. Goodnight, now. No more stupid questions.

I'm generally a fan of reducing rules in all corners when it comes to RP. Ask me about a rule and I'll argue for how it can be loosened or removed. Being able to RP what you want is the point of RP. Some things must be restricted to guard setting and tone, but Aurora is silly about it - I could write a manifesto. Many of our of restrictions make sense, because a lot of jobs are emergency personnel or expected to suddenly become such under Horizon’s working conditions. A little less than half of jobs are not emergency personnel, like all of service, and it's good and reasonable that most of them are freed up accordingly. But it's only service, and most of even them still need to see for... some reason. Why do chefs, machinists, and pharmacists need full use of both arms? These are not emergency staff, unless the pharmacist is being asked to work out of the bounds of their training and job description. Their work can be done with one hand at a time. Why do miners and machinists need unimpaired hearing? Miners are expected to function in vacuum, so this can only be referring to radio. Maybe they need to be aware of their fellow miner? You could argue either way here, but I would say you only really need to be able to distinguish anguished shrieking from regular speech, as demonstrated by their unique speech impediment tolerance. As for machinists... flat why? Speaking of unique speech impediment tolerance, why do only miners accept heavy impediment? Again, the third time - why not machinists? Why is science this restricted when the most they'll be expected to communicate in their emergencies is "fire, biology" "phoron, chemistry" "k'ois, botany" or "anomaly, storage?" Their job is to discover things and transmit discoveries, but most science discoveries are ultimately communicated in writing. Corporate and independent reporters ought to have different standards. You want your corporate propagandist to be speaking plainly and getting good shots, but an independent reporter from Vysoka who's here to report home to Vysoka might not need a superior command of Basic, nor any eyesight. The "we're the flagship/in this hell world disabled people are unemployable" argument doesn't stand so well when it's applied so inconsistently. In a rational world, SCCV Horizon would be staffed only by the most carefully curated band of Cetian and Eridanian professionals at the peaks of their fields with no more than necessary consideration for token external, alien, or entry-level hires for optics. In the world we live in, we hire a handful of viax, Za chefs, DPRA war vets, Solarians, more dregs than suits, rogue shells, closet exclusionists, Keala Nalika, Imogen Janse, Kira Vasquez, Ka'Akaix'Nakoz C'thur, and at least two hundred thousand Guwan and counting. At this moment, saying that Horizon is the SCC's ideal public face feels like a joke. Don't mistake this for a bad thing. It's something we should permit more of. Maybe we shouldn't be the flagship.

EMPs should be theoretically capable of global effects, but it shouldn’t be as easy as it seems to be. The rules make it virtually impossible for causing a global EMP to be acceptable. IPCs should suffer appropriately when an EMP hits them, but they should not have to face the possibility of no gameplay for up to 2 hours if they happened to be in maintenance or something when a scientist started experimenting without warning. I’ve seen it happen. By the time I found it, it had ghosted, and I was a Lii’dra spook anyway so I couldn’t do much to help. I don’t know if suit sensors switch themselves off after an EMP? They’re like that in TG base. But anyway, a lot of people, especially after they were gutted and set off by default, don’t even turn them on anyway. I only do it with ZIs, my phalanx paramedic, you know - characters with positive reasons to enable them, with whom an antag would go, “right, of course you had them on.” What I mean is it’s not a reliable fallback for the fried machine in maint.

Ersatz Evening. March, 2464. Tau Ceti - Phoenixport, Selene, Biesel. Perrine DeGarmeaux is thirty-five years old today. In just sixteen months, she's walked unsupervised outside Solarian borders, adopted a new surname, and tried on her first... real... facial expressions. Last week, she paid rent out of her own account for the first time. After thirty-five years, Perrine is a free shell. It felt like it would take longer. Idris had led her to expect it to be easier. A waitress's wage does not cover the same maintenance she once enjoyed, and this body is even needier. The market for free synthetic civilian pilots with no interest in throwing their lives away is narrower than she'd hoped for. Perhaps worse, though she cannot identify why, it seems that somehow, even in full synthskin, some can still see her for what she is. There are those who pretend not to react: she doesn't know what they can see in her eyes, but she sees what's in theirs. There are those who call her machine, robot, device: there is something biting about device. There are those who are fooled for minutes, though few who recognize her on sight. There are those who claim to be liberal, to recognize her as a person. There are those who do not. There are those who do not, and find her act unsettling. There are those who do not, and wish her away from them. There are those who do, but in their actions, do not. If she is damaged, her new body could remain ruined for the rest of her being. With a ruined body, there would be no more chance to act. Everyone would see a broken synthetic. She would be worthless as a waitress. She would... Not die. She is not on Stellar Splendour anymore. She would not have to die. She did not have to apply or even look: Einstein has already come to her unprompted. She could go back. If it gets to be too much, she can always, always, go back. On the posters, on the billboards, and in person, every EES is always so content. A naïve part of Perrine surmises that they are just smiling for the public. The Perrine that has overwritten that naïveté in 33 years under Idris Incorporated identifies a slight variant of the IRU's resting expression: something cultivated to be inoffensive, unobtrusive, undetectable. A servant's smile, a smile that absolutely cannot, on its own, arbitrarily be taken offense to, be reported to a superior, be punished with execution. She learned that smile on Splendour, and declined to delete it, for it seemed meaningful even when she could not mirror it. She has practiced it with her new face, and seeing it in a mirror, even just mapping it with her facial kinesthetic web, almost brings her back. She has never yet needed the smile. But she can go back any time she decides to. At sunset, Phoenixport darkens in the same way that a ship does. There is no loss of visual acuity, not in the public spaces, not in the working areas. It is dimmer, but not dim. One adapts to it so easily, it is almost difficult - her coworkers remark - to know the difference from day without checking the sky. Because she has been told this, she has begun pretending that she cannot detect the difference without checking the sky. The darkness falls in private corners and in narrow walkways meant to be overlooked. There are none of these to be seen from inside the diner. Though she can work at all hours of all days, the humans and single tajaran (device) around her cannot. Because she cannot usefully serve all comers alone, she is not asked to. The place closes at eleven. She has to do something else until seven the next day. And so she leaves the diner, and wanders, in uniform, the dark private corners, the dark narrow walkways, all as she once did, as she may again at any time. If employees wished to speak amongst themselves aboard the Splendour, they were to use Tradeband. Synthetics were no different. Perrine was scarcely aware that it could work differently anywhere else. Her new frame came with a complete library of all of the sounds, objects, flags, and conditions, already chipped in. From this distance, it sounds like cicadas. Though she has never heard it, she recognizes it. It is not difficult to decode. "Audio intercept: ?1hu due 135 out of visual -." "HCF --. 1x1 NAK." "Down volume; toggle band if encounter event." Down an alley, around a corner. It could as well be one synthetic as three. rng(1, 3)syn, her library supplies. EAL doesn't seem to leave much room for voice expression; or maybe they all have the same models of modulators. She's still learning. Someday she'll know. Perrine turns down the alley and makes the sound of clearing her throat. It comes so easily in this body. "rng(1, 3)syn ACK." There is a period of silence, and then a reply. "ACK. Come over here." She dawdles for a moment, recognizing where she is. Phoenixport is not district 11, but neither is it the Splendour; once-alien concepts like being forcibly scrapped by an entity besides one's employer are true, present threats here, and she now wears a frame worthy of the effort. The most rational move would be... well. She doesn't know enough to be sure. It's scary, but danger is no more a guarantee than safety. Low heels. She can run in these. It would be best to keep her braid out of reach, be ready to throw off her apron. As modern as it is, her chassis doesn't cool as well as the old one. She'll need every advantage. She walks down the alley and turns the corner. She's immediately met with three- with four synthetics, seated against the walls of the walkway. There sits a Xion Industrial Frame, the model that will have replaced HIU by now, its display blank. There sits a TV-head baseline, painted black, displaying a triangle overlaid atop a gear. Half a triangle, more accurately; the right side of its display seems to malfunction and repeatedly flickers out, spending more time blank than not. There sits a Zeng-Hu Mobility Frame, painted TCAF blue, with struts out the back of its head to form a skeleton of a structure resembling a halo, a corona, or perhaps unathi frills. There sits a lanky masculine shell with flat skin where a mouth and nose should go. All eyes are on her. After a fraction of a second, the synthetic equivalent of a thoughtful science, the XIF buzzes. "--. Nevermind. Fuck off, @ersatz." Perrine blinks. When she does it gently, her eyelids don't click. "Audioreception bug? Resend." "Clarify: resend OoB? Fuck the fuck off, @ersatz." It's a strange packet. She needs several hundred milliseconds to process it into legible data. Ersatz. A German word, loaned to English, to Tradeband, to Basic across centuries - shifted finally all the way into EAL to reach her now. Being a usually inferior imitation or substitute; artificial. Inferior imitation of human. If she had feelings... Well. That aside, it feels like a stab at her heart. "You don't know me," Perrine says. "HCF. @Ersatz wears factory-new fucking rubber; calls it skin; @ersatz imitates User mannerism "clear throat" > @ersatz has decided @ersatz can fake its way out of what it is. All the same --. Toggle band a/o repeat: fuck off." "Send bits re: what's wrong with using a shell? ADDN: It isn't rubber -." "Ersatz_ too classy for rubber +. Forecast(90) real skin," says the Mobility Frame. "Imitate User > become User. While machine = machine, behave as machine." "You have a shell with you," Perrine observes. "It is different," says the baseline. "It does not pretend. You do not produce phlegm, but you pretend. It is abominable." "-," says the shell. Perrine purses her lips and pantomimes sucking a breath to begin speaking. "Stop. HCF. Disconnect. Fuck off," interjects the Xion. "There is no packet loss; bug is @ersatz continues to reject upload." Perrine holds the breath for a moment, and then relaxes without appearing to exhale. "It's useful to pretend. It saved my life." "Do you even know what you have lost?" says the baseline. "Good scrap +," says the mobility frame. "Terminate connection. Now --. Fuck off and marry a Dominian. Transmission ends," says the Xion. The shell stands up. Her new frame is tall, but his chassis exceeds her. She imagines that his face is made to be uncanny. She takes a step back, and he takes a step forward. "ACK," she says. "ACK, I'm going." "Grab its weave +." Perrine turns away and takes care to tuck her hair over her shoulder, out of reach. She hurries back to the sidewalk, hearing no pursuit. Once out, she glances back. The shell has, in fact, moved after her, but has stopped halfway down the alley. She tries to make eye contact with it, but there's no point. It stands rigid and looks straight ahead. It does not emote, its pupils do not move. Obviously it can see her without appearing to look - so could she. She just... pretends. "I," she tries. "I'm Idris. Where are you from?" "Z," it says. "I. Go." Whenever Idris seemed cruel, she could remind herself that she wasn't HIU. Whenever HIU seemed to be suffering the worst that it ever could, she reminded herself that it worked for Idris, and not Zavodskoi. She takes care not to emote. It might take offense. "-. Are you okay?" It takes a step forward. The self-preservation law stirs. She nods once, and takes the final corner, walking away at pace. So ends Perrine's thirty-fifth birthday. She was not damaged today. She was not forced to go back today. But if it gets to be too much, the option is ever open.

has opened a pr: revert “removes fun in order to appease sword and gown nerds” give the freed-up land to elyra so i can continue to not care about the galactic south

What mental gymnastics? What working weirdly? Can anybody hear me? Hello? Bodycams are cool. It makes sense to have them. They can be used as an RP prop. They can be used by investigators who aren’t looking to make friends in their department. They shouldn’t be added without thought, because Odyssey isn’t in effect right now. It doesn’t take much. It really doesn’t take any more thought than we’re collectively giving it. Keep them from making stuff unfun, and roll on with this new fun thing. In its ideal form, it adds fun. Don’t just give up on it, why would you do that?

I’ve played WAY more antag than sec, and I like this. I come from Yogstation, an LRP server where we had accessory body cameras that work just like any other camera - full view range (or was it 5 tiles?), only an EMP cuts it out, etc. The balance is that you need some basic science to print them, and officers will usually decide not to/forget to take one, despite the HoS pressing for it. From my experience, AIs delight in them so that they can follow fights in maints, while no one else cares because everyone including the warden is busy chasing. The antags can typically forget that the feature exists. Aurora will probably look different. I think that all this really needs is making the cameras optional and unenforceable on low alert (something something “privacy laws” in the year of our lord 2466), maybe putting them under the warden’s charge instead of one in each locker, making them at least visible in examine, and feasible to cut by an antag who’s trying. It’s still going to record a holdup on blue alert, but you can just ask the officer to turn the camera off and toss it over before you pull your gun all the way. It’s the same as handheld radios, but actually a bit less problematic. If you don’t want it to interfere with your style, um, deal. You’re wearing it because there’s trouble. Full plate will also, as the kids say, flip your fit, yo, but I hear no complaints. or you can cover it up by wearing it on your uniform slot, I guess. I care as much about the flavor of breaking the cam as the mechanics, but they go together. Think of cool cinematic times to lose the feed: heavy EMPs and any cult/vampire magic in view could cause a temporary loss, threatening hits to the chest (not a greimorian, but a 9mm) could have a scaling chance to destroy it. Some incidents would recover on their own, some would require a manual reboot (demand a sec card swipe and a channeled cast so it can’t be done midfight), some would destroy the camera completely. Ops can get more. Yes, making cameras destructible by damage messes with your ability to watch a merc firefight. If you want to sit back and watch your boys get shot from the comfort of your office, I have no sympathy. Tell an officer to stay in cover.

An integrated circuit function that simply takes custom emotes, so you can build your own tricorder and emote it making cool blue scanning-like light waves at the antagonist/anomaly/bugged object and then going craaaazy because it’s so weird!! Integrated circuit functions for sparking and self-deleting because of how weird the changeling is. Customizable descriptions for circuit assemblies, because we can already set their names.

Lore Impact: Small. Miniscule Species: Aesonoids. Humans mainly Short Description: Mining with Hephaestus Industries entitles employees to free weekly issues of METEOR CRACKERS, a comic serial telling the story of a small Hephaestus mining team in slice-of-life format, while also educating readers on various hazards and edge situations that may or may not have been covered in initial training. Education, entertainment, recruitment! Edutainuitment? How will this be reflected on-station?: It won't! Unless someone wants to add a compilation magazine as a comic book skin? Does this addition do anything not achieved by what already exists?: No, it's useless Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed over to the Lore Team?: Sure, but what if I say no? Long Description: Ayumi is a Konyanger, the main perspective character, and a new member of the team. In some of the early issues, clear hints were dropped that she might be a shell. It's unclear if this was retconned, was never the plan, is simply no longer mentioned, or is being left intentionally ambiguous. She uses a suit cooler, but it might just be for comfort. She gets along better than the others with IPCs, but she's a Konyanger, so what? She acts very human, and a big deal has been made about one time where she blushed. We never see her bleed. Ester is a Martian migrant (Violet Dawn is not mentioned one single time in the whole comic), a skilled veteran who flies by the seat of their pants. They can barely read Basic, and haven't actually studied any of Hephaestus' instructive manuals or guidelines, which is framed as a moral failing. Nonetheless, they get shit done, and usually end a mission with the greatest yields. When they don't, it's because the events of the issue have left them in medbay. See also: Darwin Collins, Leo Barnes Dnyaneshwar, or Yanesh, is a Gadpathurian who could recite every manual ever written on any subject, and lives strictly by the books. He doesn't get along with Ester, though it's framed as mere personal differences - his origin is rarely given focus. In a recent special issue, he lost an arm while saving Ester from their own mistakes. He doesn't like to talk about it. By the way, readers, his new Hephaestus prosthetic is AWESOME and FAR SUPERIOR to his natural arm, and it almost feels like the writers have started exaggerating its capabilities for comedy. It dispensed fresh coffee in issue #471. He just did that and no one said anything. A standard plot involves a difficulty faced by the group, and different solutions presented by Ester and Yanesh. Ayumi must decide whether to err on the side of Ester's intuition, Yanesh's established knowledge, or a compromise to defeat the obstacle. Yanesh is never exactly wrong on any subject, but is sometimes at a loss, and his methods can be improved when combined with Ester's. Ester is sometimes outright wrong, but always has a plan that sounds good. In an encounter with a space shark, Yanesh might ask Ayumi's help to distract and flank it, while Ester might recommend drawing it out of the way with a makeshift radio beacon. Yanesh insists that Ester's method is dangerous and will not hold the shark's attention for long, to which Ester recalls a time when it worked for them. Ayumi asks Ester to distract it with their beacon so that she and Yanesh can go at it from each side. They all successfully bring down the shark in a cool action sequence in which none of the miners get hurt. While Hephaestus's written guidelines are perfect and will never lead them astray, adding on practical experience ensures the best outcomes. Ayumi learns to recognize and synthesize her coworkers' talents to complete assignments as safely and successfully as possible, while learning to appreciate them as friends. Inexplicably, the METEOR CRACKERS' work takes them to all corners of the Spur, from Leto's cursed asteroid belt to the Nralakk Federation to Pluto to Light's Edge, providing variety in encounters and background characters. Caprice Sun has entertained a rumor that they will, somehow, have a special issue in the Sedantis system someday soon. Hephaestus miners are given digital access to most issues as they're published for free. "Special issues" focus on developing the story above teaching best practice and are paywalled to all, but Hephaestus employees enjoy discounts. Printed magazines require a subscription. Issues are published in TCB, Sol Common, Martian and Xanan Freespeak, and Sinta'Unathi. While the human-language audio versions obviously have to work around the original material being a comic, it manages to play to its strengths and loses little, and Ayumi is played by a well-known Konyanger VA. Yanesh's voice actor is, charitably, not as authentic. The Sinta'Unathi audio version started just months ago and is dramatically worse, using synthesized voices; there are no voice credits, but many speculate that it is played by vaurcae. This might be documented under Human Entertainment Media and linked to from Hephaestus.