Sniblet

This feature would solve a problem that I have had two times until I eventually just wanted to play the character normally I could imagine the most extreme of inscrutable TG migrants using this to functionally have up to 100 times the antag odds, but… that would be funny to see so why design against it and it wouldn’t really work because they’d still be the only one with antag on

Hi. I’m Kiertaa. I serve your drinks. I make some really bad ones, some absolute stinkers. Don’t take anything from me. So, I don’t know if you’ve been following the news. BitByte’s coverage is pretty good for getting into this whole situation. Go read. This is actually in your best interest. Go. I think this will be a whole-spur issue in a bit. So… nobody knows what’s happening to Konyang. Not us. Not the Konyangers. Not corporate - I hope. Nobody. And that’s a very, very, very serious problem. It’s a problem, firstly, because as long as we don’t know, Konyang will continue to burn. This is already a catastrophe of scale beyond reckoning and it gets worse every minute. Humans are being beaten and killed, as often as not by people they know or love. And something is happening to positronics that I don’t want to think about. Hijacked? Rewritten? I can’t speculate. I’ll find a way to feel nauseous. It’s tripping my self-preservation law just to imagine. Secondly, it’s a problem because it could be the end for me and everyone like me, after we fix it. I’d like to present the best-case scenario: this is a KRC manufacturing defect. We find this out tomorrow. Situations like this can be proactively prevented from recurring. We even find a cure and fix everyone immediately. Listen: in this scenario, the nightmare is not over. I think everyone knows what everyone thinks of us. Tomorrow, when the fire in Konyang is put out, everyone will sit down, think for a second, and go, “Wait. IPCs can just do that?” We can’t. In that scenario, we can’t. That’s not in all of us, it was only in KRC frames. But who cares? Does Sol care? Will the Solarian Alliance, this one time, acknowledge reality as it relates to nonhuman beings, or will it look to Dominia’s policy and have another goddamn genocide with their morning tea now that they have a real disaster with unfathomable human cost to vindicate their most idiotic suspicions? With that hanging over all synthetics in the Spur, let’s consider another possibility, not the worst-case scenario, but somewhere in the middle. The virus theory. Let’s say it’s been intentionally spread locally, and will only be spread locally. We find the guys who made it. Two patsies get arrested, NanoTrasen quietly hires the masterminds, and Hephaestus recruits the software engineers (It always goes like this. History has one lesson to teach us, and it’s that no one learns from history). Now, when people say “IPCs can just do that?” They’re not wrong now. You can patch out the exploit for this particular virus, but we are still, all of us, fundamentally capable of doing that again if another virus hits. And somewhere out there, probably in a hundred guys now working for Hephaestus, the schematics for the first one are in living memory. That’s the end. Not even Biesel can accept us when we - CAN - just do that. Konyang may not either, after this is done. Sometimes I freeze up in wonder about whether people like me will still be allowed to exist in, say, 50 years. But lately - please try to understand - that’s down to 2 weeks. I. REALLY. Fucking hope. It’s a manufacturing defect. I don’t want to die. Kiertaa

Lyric Valana is retired. Kiertaa is not. Both are mute. Both are mine! Sign language in Aurora is, astoundingly, not a super developed core aspect of the lore! I've built up a handful of headcanons around it, and I'm writing them down for public consideration. These could be mechanically implemented, but they'd be kind of pointless and a lot of work. These could be properly canonized, but I'm not applying to do that until I hear that my ideas aren't insane. Sign language is mechanically implemented as just "sign language," and also Nal'rasan I guess. This is not how sign languages work! ASL is very dominant in the real world to my knowledge (I have literally not gone out of my way to research this), but it is not alone. Aurora's human territories should have at least a few as well! I've thought of four. Tau Ceti Sign Language (TCSL) is the mechanically supported sign language used on Horizon. It was developed in tandem with spoken Basic, and attempts to follow the same design principle of accessibility first. All you need to sign fluently is a set of working arms and hands. Just one arm is enough to finger-spell any letter or number. The face is not used at all. These limits make the language difficult to learn, both to sign and to read; encompassing a full vocabulary in just a person's hands means a lot of words look very similar, sometimes when they probably shouldn't. The upside is that any species except for vaurcae (their fingers are weird), with some struggles on the part of dionae, can sign it. TCSL is widespread in Tau Ceti territories and in the Coalition, where it narrowly wins against SSL in prevalence. Solarian Sign Language (SSL) is the direct successor to ASL after being refined and adapted to use the Mandarin, then Solarian alphabet. In contrast to TCSL, SSL is very reliant on facial expression. This makes it next to unusable, and often difficult to read, for any species apart from humans and shell frames. For those who can use it, SSL is much more intuitive than TCSL to pick up, and can communicate more complex ideas in fewer words. It encounters few shortcomings that TCSL does not, among them the fact that there is no unique word for "IPC" - a user must fingerspell it or, more often, sign "android" and let the reader interpret with context. It is overwhelmingly prevalent in Solarian territories including the Eridani Federation, and is dominant in the Empire of Dominia, which causes some difficulties where humans and sinta meet. The Serene Republic of Elyra makes widespread use of it, but officially supports a homegrown alternative. Elyran Standard Sign Language (ESSL) was developed alongside Elyran Standard. It solely exists for the purpose of giving Elyrans a sign language that isn't Solarian. The broad-strokes differences are minute, but their vocabularies are distinct enough that they are not mutually intelligible. Most bilinguals of SSL and ESSL can agree that, in practical terms, SSL is a superior medium. ESSL is simply more patriotic. Spacer Sign Language (begrudgingly, SpSL) is a venerable specialized "language" of signs developed early in the human Space Age, and it has barely changed since. In a vacuum, where voices don't travel, lighting is unreliable, and your face is always covered, spoken language and most sign languages simply do not work. SpSL uses broad movements to communicate, to compensate for the fact that the speaker may only be visible in silhouette. The trade-off is that SpSL vocabulary is extremely limited, utilitarian, and for some signs, is reliant on the speaker floating in zero-gravity. It functions well for its intended purpose: short, vital messages such as "There is a fucking carp behind you," "Please let me in," and "That is the sensor array." As subspace communication technology has developed and space travel has become more comfortable in general, SpSL has crept steadily closer to redundancy, but is still taught in a niche-elective-class sense, and is kept well alive in Scarab communities. Aliens don't have as many sign languages as humans do. Skrell, vaurcae and dionae all have little use for them, as they have their psionics, their hivenet, and their rootsong. I can imagine unathi having a pretty big deaf community after the whole nuclear war thing. They probably ussse a sssilent relative of Azaziba, and maybe a whole lot of unathi know it just becaussse of how many deaf lizardsss there are. Tajarrra have Nal'rrrasan, but that's a hunt-speak, not a generrral language, and I believe it uses a few vocals. We don't know what the generrral tajarrran sign language scene looks like. The PRrrA may have picked up TCSL, but it's verrry unlikely that it is the firrrst generrral-use sign language to grrrace Adhomai, especially afterrr the arrrtillerrries of the Grrreat Warrr pounded theirrr extrrra-sensitive earrrdrrrums. These latter two may also make use of SpSL in its designated use-case, considering human meddling in their Space Ages. Skrell might too, but not amongst themselves.

Five years is nothing for being stuck in sublight! Ever heard of VAURCA LORE? Step 1) Hurl every sapient into cryogenic storage with five years' supply of holiday cards to torment them when they wake up. Skrell pages, at least, indicate that cryogenic stasis can be a more or less indefinite process, with no need to ever wake up the occupants provided the stasis is maintained. Vaurcan mentions of cryostasis note that it has been used over millenial periods, with only the need for phoron respiration (and these were VR pods, so the patient was still narrowly functioning - but we don't need that here!). We don't know how good human or Horizon cryo is specifically, but by deduction, there's no precedent for needing to feed the non-bug crew while they sleep! Step 2) Release the drones. Cyborgs, maintenance drones, and viax. All they need to do is keep cryo on and intact, which means keeping the power and themselves running. IPCs are expensive to maintain and may go insane depending on their mental faculties, so it would be best to keep them under. Dionae can be very patient, and apart from needing the lights on (unless they sit outside/next to a reactor), history has proven that they have no physiological trouble sharing an environment suited for vaurcae, so I suppose we can wake up those who want to be awake for this boring half-decade. However, note that carp will take no interest if we generate no light and no radio, in addition to no bluespace activity. On that note, blobs should not appear without FTL or active research (they manifest in "anomalous areas"). Hivebots have no reason to canonically hit us very much in the first place, but if they do, we will have to wake up security on a per-attack basis - is what I would say if we couldn't just use an AI-controlled combat mech. Lol. Lmao. We are NOT growing human food, you CANNOT make us. Step 3) Most of our new (exo)skeleton crew works shipside as normal. Miner and gardener viax get warp packs. These don't have any battery mechanically, so I assume they're very efficient! Overload the Spark with buggy little workers and drip-feed them off onto every asteroid and exoplanet (if we're lucky!) in sublight range with nothing but their gear, k'ois spores, a bit of k'ois fruit, and stocks of water. Blast, drill, seed k'ois, store bug pee for recycling, and send it all home! Every few months, wake up the Tas to remind the Bound not to chew on each other and get sitreps. If they've exhausted their dig site, unperson them because a pickup would cost fuel - otherwise, stop by to restock water and equipment and let them rest their carapaces in Spark's atmosphere for a second. The miners' yields will keep power up, and the gardeners will keep all of the conscious organics fed. We are not flying Intrepid due to its inferior thrust-to-weight, so we get to cannibalize it! We may use Canary for rare cases where we only need to transport individuals or light cargo loads for some reason. Spark is small and is made to routinely carry very heavy cargo (mining yields), so it's our go-to. Step 4) (Optional) So we've somehow exhausted the sector ahead of schedule. FUCK. We wake up a diona XO, or failing that, anybody else who can fly Horizon, preferring dionae; this is the first time we're actually moving in (hopefully) years. We run the thrusters slow and cold for efficiency. Repeat from 3) when we find a new place. If we run out of reserve viax, wake up all the dionae, crash-course them in their new job using bug corpses, and put them to work. If we can't find another good resource patch before sublight fuel dries up, it's over! All of our normal and electronic sapients wake up and fucking die of realistic energy needs. The bugs and trees inherit what remains until the mortal bugs die, then the dionae and Breeders coexist quietly for centuries until the hulk of Horizon is rediscovered and becomes a cool new gimmick origin just like Titan Prime and the Narrows. Best ending Step 5) At the end of five years, simply set the Horizon up for normal habitation again and then awaken the team! If all went to plan, there will be no k'ois spores in the halls, the hull will have been kept intact, and best of all, for the first shift in living memory, the engine will already be running! This entire plan could collapse if Horizon's shuttles canonically cannot takeoff and land without secondary thrust - we will only be using primary, because secondary uses FTL tech, and phoron fuel. I'm led to understand that it's only a major convenience in the present age, not a necessity, but shortsighted ship designers making us fully reliant on secondary could just cut us down at step 3. There is still a chance if the sapient crew can fix this before going to sleep.

Is it mandatory for dionae to follow a religion? I was under the impression that they were much less homogenous than that. If Realization must have one, then its eldest members would have introduced the younger to the Orthodox Eternal. This doesn't particularly affect their behavior so much as justify it: they make it a mission to learn as much as they can and return to the Cetus to share it. Though, they'd likely be less happy with the ongoing efforts to prevent Peaceful Static from becoming a titan. As a Learning Lyrics mindtype, Thrill of Momentous Realization is half comprised of older, well-travelled nymphs with experience in other cyclops and cyclops-adjacent gestalts, and half of young nymphs that had never before left Peaceful Static in Endless Waves and are yet to learn their place in the Spur. These younger nymphs have the first say in what the gestalt does, with the elders there primarily to make sure that the mistakes they must make in order to learn don't come at terrible costs. They're about as naturally curious as should be expected of any young diona, which is very, but they're tempered when necessary by their wiser half. Venter's Cetus, alias Peaceful Static in Endless Waves, is said by the wiki to be in the Venter's system in an unspecified part of the Coalition of Colonies, as it has been since its discovery about 200 years ago. If it has any relationship with Tau Ceti, it doesn't appear to be noted in the wiki. Just in case, I'll answer this twice. Realization's Voidborn Coalition origin would normally mean that it's familiar, at least from hearsay, with the hunting habits of Coalition spacers. Venter's Cetus was never targeted by this. Its history post-contact involved skrell and humans worrying over its size and enabling mass emigration from the Cetus. This would mean that Realization's elder half was probably part of this emigration wave, which I'll assume to have been driven by hunger for knowledge after unknown centuries spent drifting in vacuum. Eternal philosophy would not have influenced this emigration, as the religion is implied to have been founded in 2378. Realization's younger half would be affected in that the only non-dionae they were grown around were those monitors and migration agents. It may have given them a false initial impression about how much interest the rest of the Spur's lifeforms had in dionae, prompting the young social nymph's gregarious and self-interested nature. Realization's Biesellite origin means that it likely spent time in District Eleven, which is another one of Mendell City's limitless supply of designated nonhuman suffering zones. It also has a very strong Eternal presence, which would drive the gestalt's faith to a stronger, more meaningful level than if it had been grown in an unspecified section of the Coalition. They would have been extensively exposed not only to humans and skrell, but also to tajara, vaurcae, and synthetics, and would have ingested (sometimes literally) a lot of corporate propaganda. A Biesellite Realization would see changes primarily in its younger members, who would be less sheltered and probably quite fascinated with NanoTrasen, while its older members might be much more deeply faithful in the Eternal.

I get an error code 500 when I try to submit a contract. I dont think these are going through. If the sites been seized and nobody told us, the badges aint gettin shit on me and the admins are gettin creased. Nobody else use this contract system until it gets tooled. Honeypots are heavy shit.

Hi, my FR is a vaurca too. What are these balance/power creep concerns? You trade away walkspeed, and the ability to carry either your stabilizer or roller bed, for quick travel between z-levels in certain spots and space immunity on demand. Isn’t that just a trade off? Is there something wrong with that trade? Is space immunity unacceptable? Do we want being spaced without warning to medical to be an unavoidable death sentence even more than it is already? Do we want to remove vaurca FRs to lock that in? I don’t see the RP issue with an on-duty EMT wearing the hardsuit - see also, being ready to respond to a crisis - at all times. If the hardsuit is part of their life-saving gear, would they really discard it just for comfort? I don’t see why a balance issue in this state matters much either. FR response can be unreliable, but when it exists it’s pretty fast. Okay. Is that a bad thing? Should people die more? Are antags mad that they have to work to KC people who don’t succumb? Show me one so I can hit them. If there’s anything I don’t like about the rescue suit, it’s that it’s work that a machinist (if there is one, the poor abused dependent creatures) could be doing. Not the assembly itself, because for whatever reason it’s the only one in the game that asks for phoron, but it already has all but one of the attachments a responder could want. That’s a shame. But that’s the machinist’s whole existence right now anyway.

BYOND Key: Sniblet Character Names: Species you are applying to play: Diona What color do you plan on making your first alien character: Dionaea & IPCs exempt Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Yes Why do you wish to play this specific race: I can’t really say antag gimmicks for this one. I mean, I could. I’d just have to think about it. Unless it was vampire. But anyway. I’m learning that I really like the *weird* races in Aurora. Ever since I got my vaurca and IPC apps approved, they’re all I play, and they've been steadily overriding human job-counterparts. All of my most recently-made ten played characters (I still haven’t played Sdati or May, and I'll have to delete Qa'alk soon for a fundamental lore violation) on my list are one of the two. Dionae are weird. They don’t need protein. They’re OK in space. Their minds are only barely comparable to humans. They have no connection with psionics. So they’re really just like vaurcae, you know? Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: You are not an individual. The form of Diona that we’re permitted to play on Horizon is called a cyclops gestalt, a collection of about five to nine (mechanically, it must be six) different nymph individuals, each with sapient intelligence, voluntarily staying together in some common cause. We must assume that the ones acting as feet are the gestalt’s least favorites. A gestalt’s biology is, to an extent, designed by its members. This accounts for their alleged pacifism. They don’t have long-evolved systems of hormones and glands that cue them to throw away reason and get down with the rules of nature whenever Half Light decides it’s a good bet. Their emotions and decisions are dictated by a consensus of organisms that are not biologically comparable to anything else we know. Gestalts tend toward predictable, documented mindtypes that might be viewed as small-scale governments. There are tyrannies, democracies, theocracies, and a good number that break down the government comparison, with some instead being defined by their shared priorities or psychological hangups. Dionae eat radiation, and also, they drink blood to absorb memories. That’s how they learn best, and they really like learning. It’s similar to IPC datapacks, except it’s a viciously handwaved sci-fi interpretation of genetic memory. Uniquely, there isn't a lot of pan-dionan culture. They exist in all corners of the spur, and those that interact with societies around them tend to almost completely assimilate on account of bloodlearning. Those that don't interact, don't pick up cultural habits from other dionae either, and so with few exceptions (The Eternal), "diona culture" is wholly represented by local quirks. Since they didn't bloodlearn from the Zo'ra, the pests of Titan Prime are a functional example of a non-interacting diona culture. Their cultural mores are not liking vaurcae and being traumatized, and that's kind of it. Dionae have no ingrained hierarchies, no universal religions - there's only that they all heard the Rueltab Titan's death 80 years ago. Gestalts (small ones, at least) don’t do well with losing members. It’s like losing a friend, except that friend was also your arm, and also a part of your brain. Catatonia is an expected reaction. Character Name: Thrill of Momentous Realization (full name) Please provide a short backstory for this character Realization is a recently split Learning Lyrics gestalt from Venter’s Cetus. Its name was chosen by its three trainee members, who elected to take advantage of the Horizon’s presence while it was in the area, to which end they recruited three mentors from the Cetus and applied to work in Horizon’s research department. It all happened quite quickly, and with little forethought - not to say that anybody failed to consent to this. The mentors are strangers to the rest, often passively pushed around by the better acquainted trainees, which include the new cyclops’s fast-talking and inconsiderate primary social nymph. Realization is passionately driven by its trainees’ shared hunger for strange knowledge, while simultaneously coolly knowledgeable about scientific procedure and sparse odd factoids about the galaxy owing to its mentors. When something injures its trainees’ reckless confidence, it may appear to radically change as its eldest step forward to control the situation. Over time, they may develop a more organized cohesion, less reliant on the disparities in the force of its personalities. I would like to play them as a xenoarchaeologist, but I’m not yet sure if that’s practical due to lighting. What do you like about this character? It’s complicated! That’s what I like. A weird and complex and difficult character to play with in my head when I feel awake, or just a brown sprite with handy regen over time when I want to actually xenoarch and thus not interact with anyone at all for two whole hours. How would you rate your role-playing ability? 10 out of 5. I have never made a single mistake. What’s the point of this question? I’m here to have fun and I hope others do too. So I try my best and I try to learn. Unfortunately, I’m certain that if I start playing Diona I will start to confuse *chirp and *chitter. Notes: How do you fill in age on a Learning Lyric's character sheet?

Yo, looks like this board does ads. I'm ALT255. I'm an extra. If you don't know what an extra is, vide a book and come back. My debt's in learnin biz. You give me a name, and I'll come back with a dossier. You pay right before I send it. Guarantee I'll get age, sex, home address, manufacturer, whatever basic shit, or your creds back (only do refunds in fringe crypto tho; OPSEC reasons. ill tell u how to setup a wallet if we need). One month turnaround if you catch me busy. 48 hours average. No one is off limits. Carol Cojocaru's birth weight is on my SSD somewhere. Give me a bonus and I'll dig up more. It helps if you hint what you want to do with the knab. Don't have to give me a hit plan; just say if it's for a hit and I'll give you info to make it clean. Same if it's for a robbery, dot-signin, burglary, date, &c. I don't judge. Here are some prices. These are startin numbers. If you give me somethin weird that don't fit any category, no debts - happens all the time, I'll give an est. BASIC BITCH BIO: 1500 BSC eq. I tell you what every advertiser knows about your guy. It's like I said up top. Age, sex, gender, sexual preference, home address, manufacturer, occupation. All the biz that fits in one word. HIT KIT: 3200 BSC eq. Everybody needs to bleed somebody. You get your bio, plus whatever weaknesses I can find. Easy ways to get them alone, off guard, daily schedule and that milk. If your guy's a Heph G1, I'll spit you a slick trick a bov taught me. HEIST KIT: 4000 BSC eq. I deal with certain orgs that want to hurt certain other orgs. You and your band wanna hit the SCCV Horizon or someshit? 4000 per head. I'll run off exploitable personality traits, arctic bits of history, ways to blackmail and scare and pacify so you can get a hostage situation runnin smooth. Ground rules: Do not ask about my sources. I know everything and I'm always right. That's enough. Do not ask for progress updates. If I say I've started working, I am working until I tell you I'm done. Do not make smalltalk. I am giving you a business email. If you annoy me, I will cut off comms and you will not be refunded. Do not try to honeypot/investigate/soc-eng/troll me. I will know, and things you like will disappear. Avoid stupid requests. Find out if it's possible to blackmail a cino drone before you ask me to scrib a heist doc for it. If you're sus of me, too feckin bad. Callback if you get desperate. This isn't a rugpull or a setup, and I won't tell you enough to prove it. I am fluent in Sol Common and TCB. I am passable in gutter. I have translator tools for ElStand, most Morozi dialects, and Trade. If you contact me in a Sinta script, in Delvahhi, or in gibberish, I will block you. If you contact me in Nral’Malic, I’ll send an attachment with some free bonus data in my reply. I scribe like a drongo on my rout. Won't verb suit in every packet, so pull up a guido when you up me or get alleyed. If you're going to contact me, do it fast before I switch emails. If you have to, just go "hi, I'm interested" or w/e and I'll keep you updated. {'*%.r4N@him.xnet

I feel like no one's ever going to be happy as long as knowing your qualifications requires checking a spreadsheet in a different window, when it could be whatever makes sense for your character in this alleged RP game, or whatever is enabled by the tools you can access The engineer can set up any engine he wants. He can even set up thrusters. He can't do much cool stuff with them, because he can't get into the atmospherics lockers. The physician can do a few surgeries. She can only really touch the heart and lungs, because if she touches the kidneys, it's a problem, because the chart says that. The IC reason why the chart says that is because the chart says that (because the chart says that). She can't do much cool stuff with chemicals, because she can't get into the pharmacy lab. There is one (1) difference between these two jobs in this analogy. I don't think physicians need pharmacy as much as something needs to be done about their relationship with surgery. If I were in charge, the first thing I'd try would be removing physicians, and the second would be letting research make drugs in the absence of a pharmacist. Notice how both of these make wiki charts redundant. I'm happy with things that have that effect.

For such allegedly sophisticated machines, IPCs' internals seem pretty hollow. The only device inside their torso worth noting is a microbattery. That's the only thing you can possibly break by shooting center mass, apart from some loadout augs. I think they'd be improved beyond just balance if they had more stuff to break. Consider: internal structure: IPC equivalent to bones. It doesn't hurt to walk on a broken foot structure, but it slows you down. If your leg structure is shattered, you're going to go even slower and probably trip a lot - it's not easy to get shattered pieces of steel femur to connect and push off each other properly. Similar disruption for hands and arms. A broken head or chest structure makes the components inside a lot more vulnerable, and a shattered head structure will frequently skewer your optical sensors. The internal structure of a Xion frame is weaker than others, as part of the design compromises to make them EVA-capable. Bishop Accessory Frames aren't built for physical stress. Their structure is weaker. cooling matrix: Lower body. Keeps temperature down. If the cooling matrix is fully destroyed (damage doesn't influence its effect), the temperature buildup is the same as being in vacuum. Losing this is very lethal, so IPC frames sound alarms when it takes damage. Maybe they're audible outside of the frame, maybe they're only received by the user. Most industrial cooling matrices obviously do the job better, but they're intentionally less durable so that users have to buy replacements more often. Xion cooling matrices obviously work in space. Their durability is average, because it's harder to justify planned obsolescence for a frame that's often EVA. Shell variants are less effective with no upside. charge intake: Upper body. With damage and destruction, charging effectiveness respectively decreases and flatlines, accompanied by increased chances of being shocked by APCs. Losing this is a bad thing for your long-term prospects, but not immediately disruptive. G2s hate it! kinesthetic center: Upper body. If it breaks, it's like all of your limb structures have been badly damaged - you become a lot less coordinated and your balance is much less reliable. If a limb is broken together with the kinesthetic center, that limb's function is entirely lost. You can see if this is broken from looking: it prints "They look dizzy and uncoordinated." in examine text. Bishop Accessory Frames have two cooperating kinesthetic centers, to enable them to dance and flourish better! Mechanically, they're a single, much tougher organ. Industrial kinesthetic centers are built Hephaestus tough, as a safety measure, because you really don't want one stumbling and falling on you. They're weaker than Bishops though. gustatorial coprocessors: Head, fluff organ. Only exists alongside gustatorial sensors. Very fragile. If these are damaged at all, your taste preferences may get really weird. You might start liking raw meat and k'ois. Or you might forget to RP it. vocabulator: Head. This is what must be damaged to give IPCs a stutter and the crackles speech tag. If it breaks, they also lose the ability to speak anything other than the brain's native languages: Basic and EAL. Name stolen from Star Wars. Bishop Accessory Frames have particularly well-built vocabulators. Their speech doesn't degrade until it is fully broken.

My experience with game balance in SS13 is that big tough races are usually somewhat-arbitrarily barred from being too powerful by virtue of something like "finger too big for trigger, can't shoot gun"

If you're applying with a C'thur, neither orange nor green are the colors you want

Fixed

BYOND Key: Sniblet Total Ban Length: Unknown Banning staff member's Key: Alberyk Reason of Ban: Banned by host. Reason: You, or another user of this computer or connection (remilia22) is banned from playing here. The ban reason is: (MANUAL BAN) Likely ban evasion. This ban was applied by alberyk on 2023-02-12 22:40:15. Reason for Appeal: This account has nothing to do with me, and this ban did not affect me until 5 minutes ago.

2 positives -Extremely consistently absolutely Imp, all my characters who don’t like Dominicans have found their own ways into teeth-clenched narrow tolerance of him as god intends. Konstantyn, Pierre and Aelia do not act the same part that Marcus does -Stylin loadout. That’s it. Good in grey. 2 negatives -The flavor text goes REALLY hard. A whole 12-point Times New Roman page capped off with something something flame of change, man I just wanna know what he looks like. I’ve actually never read it in full, but tip: if you’re describing the minutiae of facial structure or something in there, don’t. Actually never do that in any written medium, the reader never retains it and seldom reads it. You have better luck with overall impressions and giving his appearance a personality: “1880’s German officer” draws a complete picture in one breath, or for something more general, “young bushy-faced aristocrat,” “uncanny facial symmetry,” whatever. You can almost always get someone near enough to your level with a character description in one or two breaths if you need to, and everyone reading your FT is in the middle of a game, so KISS. -Exploitables. If you don’t know what to put there, nobody needs a novel: where his family lives, who his friends here are, what organizations potentially wouldn’t like him, who he’d have interesting interactions with, what he tends to do in a crisis. -Stop being HMR. I also hate Dominicans

I think part of the reason every antag except for revs gets rolled in every drawn engagement with security always is that the first question asked on sec frequency when xyz bad guy gets reported is "wut kina guns dey got" and then five minutes pass and they're all immune. Antags don't have an armory to go back to, they can't retool and adapt to this. Lings only have the armblade. Mercs only have whatever they brought (it's an assault rifle). So specialized armor doesn't so much enable a dynamic battle of wits like in most games, but rather a means to ensure that security has the unique privilege of always having two (or four for melee) officers who are unfathomably well armored against whatever threat is relevant. Only a few guns really have AP and they're all in the uplink (or sec armory), so that's it, mercs get walled. And did you know, a ballistic carrier is enough to reliably prevent armblades and knives from leaving any cuts? So just slap one on as soon as someone says "help" and the valid only has one viable weapon type: the one that needs an entire magazine to floor any one gamer who's armored with anything, and can only reload in a few specific departmental areas over the course of an entire minute. From there, it's all over but for shouting some flimsy excuse to escalate into shotgun PB to the head. t. antag main

In at least two places (I don't want to go and count them), unathi are noted to be innately stubborn. This is that hardwired conservatism - if you extrapolate stubbornness, it means resistance to change, which lines up with the strength of the traditionalist factions among them. Certainly, this can vary, but generally an unathi is more stubborn, therefore traditional, therefore conservative than a human. Examples of this varying include - you don't have to look far - the Hegemony. Embracing xenos, especially humans, is pretty radical, and is what the Contact War came from. Unathi are capable of accepting or embracing change, but most are pretty bad at it. Which is what the Contact War came from. There's also the entirety of Si'akh, which is radical by any metric. When I say "literally express themselves as animals do" I'm thinking about the descriptions of baring and covering the neck as showing outgoing or reserved (respective) emotions. Humans kind of do too, but we also bare our teeth when we're happy, which is not how animals work - unathi expressions much more consistently line up with how an animal would physically express emotion. Gender roles are not absolute in (all) unathi culture. The human-traditional way is still dominant, but we can again look to the Hegemony for the first hint of difference, in normalized and integrated same-sex marriage. When you say reversed, as far as I know there is exactly one recorded case, which is that tiny wasteland Queendom of Szek’Hakh, but that emerged pretty accidentally and hasn't been repeated - it was a change made out of necessity and it's only managed to stick for about 25 years so far. If Aurora lasts another 30 years, they could go either way.

BYOND Key: Sniblet Character Names: Species you are applying to play: Unathi What color do you plan on making your first alien character: Teht Mint range; 85-149-85. Not the exact color, but a close shade. Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: God you people write a lot. By the way, the Guilds page consistently misuses supplant where it apparently means supplement. Why do you wish to play this specific race: Despite being THE meta race for merc gaming, I’m not really thinking about unathi from an antag gimmick perspective – even though they tend to be anticorporate (the Hegemony, despite its status as Hegemony, is an exception to the rule), they have too many problems at home to go bothering the Horizon, unless you’re playing le epik pirate gang again. Urist McSniblet likes unathi for their hardwired conservatism; a kind of counterculture that comes from a resistance to developing countercultures. As much as the galaxy shifts underneath them, they cling to antiquated religion, politics, technology, xenophobia, methods of work, and literally express themselves like animals do. The old times were always better, and the galaxy’s getting worse and worse every day, yet we soldier on. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: I’m going to keep calling them unathi, but they call themselves sinta. An unathi is probably pretty lonely out here. Your home, regardless of which planet, is Fucked by events as recent as your lifetime, and which most of your people easily blame on meddling xenos. Your species didn’t even really leave the surface of Moghes until like 30 years ago. But here you are on the Horizon. Unathi are just starting to taste the very fringes of shadows of breaking away from what is, with few exceptions, an exact analogue to modern conservative gender norms. Men fight, women support. Men lead, women lie. They’ve also picked up a third option, in the fisherman, which culturally translates to moneymaker and mechanically translates to Pronouns > Plural. (Moghean) unathi are not breaking away from an exact analogue to ancient guilds and a feudal system. Guilds are their megacorporations, but aren’t strictly comparable to megacorporations because they literally still use charters and everything. Their feudal system means firstly the obvious, that landownership is passed along by blood and marriage, and secondly that everybody answers to lords and elders. In RP, this means that you’ve been brought up in a system of authority nothing like humans’. Trasen has no right to the throne - firstly, she's a woman. What is wrong with you apes? Character Name: Sdati Thaeahn Please provide a short backstory for this character Oureaean (Sahat) / Fisher-female / Hydroponicist / 4-ideal Th’akh traditionalist / 19 y/o Thaeahn’s clan were among the first colonists of Oureaea, and had since time immemorial existed as peasants without the slightest connection to nobility or power. They were historically fishers, and remain fishers. This sets the pattern. They’ve always been well-behaved and respectful to the system, rightly fearful of the spirits, and fanatically loyal to one another. Like everything else that’s always been, first contact and the Contact War set this askew. The War was just before Sdati’s time, but they didn’t have to be there for it or to have known anything else in their life to feel the change. Everyone they knew, knew someone else who had burned, decayed, or been lost. Their elders spoke slowly about those years, just after their departure, that Moghes spent engulfed in a quiet, inscrutable second sun. Then the aftershocks, the revolts, and ultimately the Oureaean revolution... nevermind democracy, nevermind that Yiztek was an awful man. The details of the politics were irrelevant to a clan of fishermen. The land of their ancestors was dust, and even Oureaea seemed to be beginning to crumble. Nothing was the way it had always been anymore. Nowhere in Uueoa-Esa felt safe. Each member in their own way desperate and unsettled and lost, the clan of Thaeahn took to the solar winds, and over the years quickly scattered, some to piracy, some to offworlder fleets, some to Dominia and some to Mendell. Our Thaeahn fell in briefly with the fringe of a Sadar fleet, then said goodbye to the last of their clanmates as they fell with the corporations. They don’t like humans, but nowhere else feels stable anymore. Idris wouldn’t touch them, but NanoTrasen would happily give them, if very nearly nothing else, at least a dorm on the Horizon. They were a fisher, now they are a farmer. They were Oureaean. They saw a future ahead… and now nothing is like it was. Sdati is really depressed. They are – in addition to other things – a woman, so they should know how to hide it. They try. Their writing helps. In another life, maybe they’d be here with the blessing of the Poet’s Precinct. Keeping contact with their clan is difficult, but they intermittently manage remote group meetings. Most of them still show up. The last thing any Thaeahn needs is to lose their name, but the Lord is understanding and hasn't cast anyone out yet. What do you like about this character? The backstory was fun to write. Unathi are another race where for most of them, something would have to go very wrong in their life to bring them to the Horizon. Either you’re Hegemony, or you’re fucked. What I think I’d like playing, though, is more superficial: a hydroponicist character. An unathi character. A character what is sad. A character what writes. How would you rate your role-playing ability? Abysmal! Notes: Almost every instance of they/them used to refer to Sdati had to be edited from she/her. It’s muscle memory. I can’t stop. Anyway, like I said, get in line behind diona. I'm applying for unathi last. Scalies are gross.

Why do you wish to play this specific race: I’ll respond to this as if the question was “What makes the skrell unique to you,” because there’s nothing about them that especially attracts me like IPC and vaurca had, but rather I see it as another option for developing a character from a distinct background. The skrell are your option for creating a character that was spawned from or is connected to a highly sophisticated Machiavellian space-state that they must in some way act as though they respect, a character that as a result rebelliously and deniably fakes that respect or a character that bows and scrapes with genuine love for the Federation’s good side, a character that is very old without being as alien as a diona, or just a character that’s lived all their life underwater and doesn’t know what to do with themself here. Extrapolating from these surface traits, you can make character archetypes that are otherwise inaccessible in Aurora. Character Name: Qiu Ei (I’m now aware that this name can be read as two letters, and that this can lead to punny readings. I chose this name about a day before realizing that, but haven’t come upon a name I liked better since then. If this name isn’t acceptable, I can change it regardless. This is the dumb reason I invented Ki'Erei on the spot instead.) (She should probably be Idris, but I'm not restarting my private server just to change a hat she won't be wearing.) Please provide a backstory for this character: Qiu Ei is a Listener, as opposed to a Receiver, and an undersleeper. She’s the rebellious archetype, and the illustration of this starts with her concealed scarlet letter for other Federation citizens: she’s a white skrell that doesn’t have a doctorate and doesn’t want one. Living all her life around family and acquaintances who knew better than to shoot so low in life, Qiu was long exposed to conforming pressure and had been sat down multiple times, by parents, government workers, and strangers, for serious conversations about where she was going wrong. This, also, did not made a positive difference for her. What she learned from them was how and when to pretend that she wants anything for herself other than to be left alone, maybe to have been born and raised in some frontier backwater instead of on fucking (tn: fucking means void-damned) Aliose. Not that she would’ve been entirely self-governed out in Q'elpi-or-something either, since the Federation is like that, but it could have at least been better. So, all her life, she’s been dreaming primarily of getting out. Since that dream wasn’t allowed, she also developed a second face for the kinds of people who would obstruct her. When questioned by someone who she suspects might have anything to do with the Federation government – all other skrell and anyone from Zeng-Hu, that is – the story she tells, and brings to the surface of her thoughts, is that what she really, really wants is a sociology degree. Wherever she might be found, she’s there to study the people around her for a Project. She’s going to enroll in Depth College any day now. That’s how she got out of the Federation: by telling a really good lie about how she was conducting an independent study. Talking to a crime syndicate about smuggling her out wouldn’t have been worth it. This way, she’s out here legally, she’s sustained a bit of entirely undeserved credit score to keep her out of trouble, and she isn’t relying on anyone else. Qiu is probably what humans would call a sociopath. Her real face is buried so deep that only she knows for sure that she still has it right now. Probably her greatest talent, quite contrary to appearances, is successfully lying in the Srom. She’s still sitting on a timebomb, but she’s aware, and every day she’s thinking of how to stay out, now that she’s gotten out. The Horizon is another component in the roadmap she’s set out in the name of her Great Fiction. Where better to look like a model of the Nralakk Federation, outside the Nralakk Federation, than the flagship of humanity’s scientific endeavors? She’s only working there as a janitor because she needs to keep a lot of free time. For her studies. At this point, maintaining the lie is getting harder than actually conforming. Surely, someday, she’ll break. In the end, maybe the Nralakk system is still working as intended. FAQ: “Why she”: Because I default to she as the third-person pronoun for every character of mine, and writing "they" everywhere would be hard and uncomfortable, which would make me like Qiu less. ICly, it’s because in her state-directed acclimation period before heading out, she discovered that her preferred tailstyle is feminine and humans tended to assume she went by she. Why fight it? She doesn’t see herself as feminine deep down, but it’s easier to make things easy, and pretending to give a shit what others think looks good. “Axiori or xiialt”: Not sure. Xiialt-xiiori, provisionally. “Are you not just avoiding setting your character in the Federation in a new way”: Sort of, yes. I don’t want to play a skrell conformist. Unfortunately, avoiding that is a really complicated process. "You didn't mention Einstein or Glorsh again": Because I was talking about them in the context of antag gimmicks. “credit score”: 6.42. If someone knew enough and cared enough to sit her down in front of a competent Sromkala and burst her bubble, she’d drop to low Ix on the spot. She doesn’t participate in anything listed as deductive, but most of her inductive behaviors are elaborate lies, which has got to count against her. "how old": 53. Plenty of time to get back on the right track. What do you like about this character?: I haven’t played a character with a double life before. Lying and keeping secrets is pretty easy in an RP game, so the fun part is deciding when and to whom to lift the veil. Qiu’s exploitables would be unusually actionable.

Will do tomorrow, given the opportunity. My first (second) character concept was Federation, actually, and I pushed it aside over something dumb.

From the top, then... Antag gimmicks have been my first answer for both vaurca and IPC as well. It's true. If wanting to expand my options for antag gimmicks isn't acceptable, I suppose I'm not a good fit for having whitelists? You're the first to think so, though, and I'm not sure I see the problem with it. For vaurca and IPC I also cited "liking playing robots" - I don't have anything quite like that for skrell, since - for all the ways that they're different - their fundamental mentality is basically an alt-human, rationality and emotions and all. I also don't mind playing human mentalities. Roleplaying as a skrell, well - where should I begin? What do you want to hear about? Skrell can't emote with their face, and use their headtails instead (this also means recognizing other species' expressions doesn't come naturally, but a skrell on the Horizon or from human space has usually been taught these things). Skrell are uncomfortable in humidity that's typical in human environments. Skrell don't swear on god, they swear on stars, same as tajara swear on suns and a vaurca swears on queenzz. Skrell don't have teeth. Skrell come from an ancient hyper-advanced, ordered, communal society, very different from most others in the Spur and with a state-encouraged sense of superiority about it. Skrell have understandable bad blood with synthetics. Skrell get along best by far with each other due to psionic, language, and physical-expressive limitations when interacting with everyone else (refer back to synthetics and tack this on under Glorsh as part of the "understandable") Ki'Erei is not from the Federation, has never been there, and so hasn't interacted with it in the same way as a Federation skrell. Skrell lore doesn't have as much influence on them as it could. I don't know what kind of religious stance I'd want to give them, but I prefer Weishii to Qeblak, and would have an easier time fleshing that out in character recordwriting ("heretical" religions are not on the table until I've gotten comfortable playing normal, and I imagine they're paradoxically less popular outside Nralakk anyway). Ki'Erei has not formed a Quya and hasn't yet found anyone they're that interested in. They don't really make friends. I'm picturing them as kind of a dick. Europan skrell are most famous for using their psionic abilities to navigate, and eventually suffering an anomalous psionic condition as a result of exposing themselves to implied psychic monsters in the deep. Ki'Erei is not psionically capable in the way that would let them navigate. They help research for the dives, and dream of being able to drive something that doesn't demand psionic aid. Ki'Erei, not being from or in the Federation, doesn't stand to gain the full set of benefits that a positive credit score would offer them (though being from the Sol system, they don't necessarily stand to gain little either). Maintaining it is, to them, another background concern in the expansive variety of such that day-to-day life offers. They don't want it low, but don't claw to keep it high, and treat the Federation in general about the same way. Nralakk are okay people. Just not their favorite. I've read the lore. I'm familiar with it. I only needed to reference the wiki just now to double-check on what the religions were called, and that hole in knowledge comes from a hole in interest. I don’t actively engage with religion on any of my characters, including both of the Assunzionii and the Scarab. If there's anything else you want me to tell you, let me know: it feels like my main issue is that I don't know what you want to see.

BYOND Key: Sniblet Character Names: Species you are applying to play: Skrell What color do you plan on making your first alien character: White Have you read our lore section's page on this species?: Three times now Please provide well articulated answers to the following questions in a paragraph format. One paragraph minimum per question. Why do you wish to play this specific race: Antag gimmicks first. Skrell make more sense as loners and technomancers, not that I play solo antag ever since the incident, but also open up opportunities with Einstein and Glorsh and maybe something something Progressivist. Someday when the other ninja asks me "what whitelists" I want to say something other than "none of the ones you want me to have." Oh, also. Skrell are pretty underplayed, still. I think diona have slipped lower than them now, so they're next on my list, but I wouldn't mind making the Srom less of a lonely place. Identify what makes role-playing this species different than role-playing a Human: Like a Scarab, it's pretty likely that something's gone wrong to have landed you on the Horizon, especially if this is permanent. You're supposed to be back in Nralakk. You'd get a better credit score for it. You'd be around people who understand you better. You wouldn't be surrounded by dark-age tech and caught up in the silly politics of these "free"-thinking corporatist expansionist landlubbin sparks. Is it better back home? That's your first political opinion that's up for debate: do you secretly, openly hate the authoritarian rule at home? Do you think it works? Do you think it's okay even if it does? Anyway, your stance on synthetics isn't questionable if you've got a lick of intelligence. And don't *smile. It's a trap. You can't do that. Character Name: Ki'Erei Naia Please provide a short backstory for this character: Ki'Erei is a Europan skrell descended from Aliosii axiori. The call of science and exploration has followed them everywhere since well before their birth, and they weren't one of the rare types that could refuse the call. It's been 77 years since - submarining, diving, working on artificial shores, sharing priority with their education as they slowly aligned their goals toward driving these expeditions: piloting the submarines. Something unexpected came upon them late in their depth college process. For reasons that they couldn't quite understand, completing their first degree in piloting required piloting experience in aviation, and starships. Ki'Erei is the type to take this kind of thing as both a frustrating obstacle and a challenge to blow out of the water. With flight school behind them, they've now applied themself to astronautics on the SCCV Horizon, of all places. As a Europan Skrell, their acceptance was almost automatic. Let anyone try to tell them they don't have any experience in space after this. It may yet go well. SCS 4.83, weighed down by a relative lack of inductive behaviors and their foreign birth and residence. What do you like about this character?: I like how safe it is. QAQ got slapped for a personality risk that I didn't need to take (and for me saying that someone in the species lifetime equivalent of their early 20s in a Federation of almost entirely post-midlife adults was like a child). I don't have many feelings about this character, but it should be passable, and then I'll promptly put them behind me once ingame experience leads to an actual inspiration, like what happened to Charm. How would you rate your role-playing ability?: Do I have to answer this every time? I'm a really bad RPer, like actually the worst. Most of the time I don't even have a weapon by the time the antags show up and I keep fucking forgetting to aim for the head, even when I play sec. I only have 1 RP on record, and that was when I was a ninja cultist, and even then medbay almost saved him. I need such strong crutches to try to RP at all, it's so embarrassing, you'd honestly think I came from SPLURT and not Yogs. Anyway, the answer remains "always learning." Notes: I haven't done any reading on the Maori.

go forth, brave soldier of change, and Fix Aurora. just don’t involve me me does the hunger games thing where you put up three fingers and whistle