Harmonic InVersion (Sign-Ups)

After the pitifully premature death of my last RP, I’m trying this again. This is an, I hope, original concept about piloting mecha using musical genres as both a source of power and a thematic base. Gotta love me some aesthetics. We’re going for a coliseum here. The year is 20XX, but on the far end. Expect contemporary culture, with some added future technology here and there.

This RP's a combination of ideas, stemming from concepts from "And It Don't Stop" by Andrew Hussie, assorted Mecha Shows like G Gundam, and some musing with people on a Skype chat long hours into the night.

Excerpt from an editorial by Alex Lebhaft, Bluesweek Magazine

“You know, a lot of people, smart people too, wasted their whole lives trying to fix the Energy Crisis of ‘43. A lot of wars. A lot of dead people. War changed, you know. We made walking tanks, light-speed communication, nanotech, affordable holograms, and other things you’d only see in some late-nite sci-fi special. Bloodshed was power back then, and power was something you had to steal. But we found ourselves a solution. You’d be surprised just how easy the answer was, hell, it was in front of us the whole time.

Either it was something in the ground we found, or some new material found in some lab, but we found it. We found our solution. A material that provided clean, useable energy when music was applied to it. Well, it was just Elevator Music at first; It’s the most efficient solution after all. We call it “EM” for marketing reasons. Good power output in the L.O. Fantasia Core and what not. There’s no reason to try anything else really.

But hey, we did.

That’s when things got interesting. We found out that, while other types of music weren’t as effective, they did provide some… additional bonuses. Ever heard of the H.I. Championships? Well did you think the theme music was just for show? The music is power! It’s literally what makes it all that way. The CANON's, the uh…Computer-Acoustic Neural Octave Network, I think, they’re fueled and powered by specific kinds of music… genres. That’s the word for it. We built robots for entertainment, and made some kind of coliseum thing to entertain the masses. Good money in it too. Now, some guy in those championships, in the early days, he hated elevator music. So much. So he built his entire robot themed around his favorite kind of music… now, I don’t remember what it was, just that I don’t like it. But he decimated the game. Utterly. His CANON was just… so much stronger than all the basic ones that still ran on EM. It changed the whole game around. He brought life back to music, man.

I think this is the 10th anniversary of the start of the championships. I’m sure something special’ll come around this year.“

Sordini Estate

Hello? Yes, this is Francesco Sordini speaking. You’ve gotta be ridiculously important if my secretary patched you through. Who’re you supposed to be, eh?

Oh, you’re here for the Composer job. Good, we’ve been lookin’ for some rookie pilots. But look, kid,

Here’s the plan, right? No calling a Genre. You make a sheet and, if I like it, ya get it, and ya get the job. Capiche? Only one CANON per Genre. You gotta send us your CANON’s blueprints, then you gotta fill out your application form, then you talk to me. If someone already has it, then I guess che peccato. Sucks to be you. I’m a busy man, alright? The Sordini family isn’t gonna run itself, y’know. Here’s your basic form, I’ll get Ossia to fill out the appropriate paperwork later. Who’s Ossia? Fuggedaboutit.

Conductor:

• Name: (Bonus points if you can somehow incorporate a musical term) I’m kidding, probably.
• Age: (Be reasonable, you’re applying for a job here)
• Gender: (Yep)
• Appearance: (A description or a picture, I’m not picky.)
• Personality: (You guessed it. One sentence descriptions are a quick way to get denied.)
• Biography: (Their backstory. When writing, take into account that this isn’t a serious RP, just an action oriented one. I’m not looking for a grimdark tragedy here. List some likes and dislikes, some musical tastes, some instruments that they play, etc.)
• Skills: (These aren't battle skills. They're off the clock skills. Do note, that they should be able to play at least one instrument found in your chosen genre. The battle-music is made semi-live.)

CANON:

• Name: (You’ve gotta name your mecha something, right? It can be a song title, a band name, an original creation, anything really.)
• Octave: 1 (This is your level. You’re a rookie, you start at 1.)
• Genre: (What are you theming your CANON around? Where do they draw their power? Don’t do it by just basing it off the “name”. That’s just lazy. Use the “feel” of the music.)
  • Example: (Post a song you think best describes this theme. Link, please. Give us an example of what's going to be blasting out of the CANON's illustrious sound system.)
• Design: (I suggest describing it, unless you can find a picture of a musical themed mecha somewhere. They should be somewhat around 10-15 feet tall. )
• Equipment: (It needs to fight with something, now doesn't it?)
• Fugues: (These are battle skills. Keep in mind they should in someway make a reference to your chosen musical genre.)

Now, some important terms you’re going to need to know in the long run:

• Andamento - Often referred to as an “Anda” or an “AM”, is an advanced Fugue, and usually used as a trump card. You won’t be getting one until you’ve gotten enough experience to at least be in the second Octave. They're made with battle experience.
• EQ - The rate of synchronization between Conductor and CANON. An EQ of zero is referred to as a “Flat” and means outright failure to use a system as intended. A nigh-perfect EQ is referred to as a “Sharp” and means a sync rate approaching 1:1. These fluctuate with the flow of battle. High EQ rates are a gamble, as is explained later.
• H.I. Championships - Your chosen place of employment. “H.I.” stands for Harmonic Inversion. It’s pretty good money, honestly. There’s always the chance of grave injury, death, or worse: getting a song stuck in your head.
• L.O. Fantasia Core - The most important part of any Music-Engine, and what provides power to it. “L.O.” stands for “Liquid Omaggio”, Omaggio is the material that powers the engine. No one’s really sure how it was discovered.
• Visualizer and AP Console - The AP Console, the main control of the CANON, works on a system that registers the user’s movements through a skin-tight suit woven with nanotechnology. The suit is generally worn underneath clothing, and revealed when entering the suit. The suit is heavily stylized. The user is suspended in an augmented reality environment, the Visualizer, that displays combat-data and live video footage of the outside, from where the head would be. The Visualizer, should EQ be high enough, will also reflect any damage or actions done toward the CANON onto the Conductor. The AP Console can also run offline training simulations without turning on the CANON’s movement systems.
• Hologram - While referred to as such, they're actually more like semi-solid luminous constructs rather than the intangible light the word connotates.

Roster

• Erik Magnusson - Crom "You think this is one of them 'larps', Dontcha?"
• Darius Harrison - Brass "Arentcha a little too old ta be dressed like that?"
• Amber Barton - Zav "Well if it works it ain't like I can say no."
• Arthur Oscines - Scion "This is what passes these days? Yeesh."
• Melody Cromwell - Palatino "Lighten up a bit, wouldja?"
• Sawatari Jun - Opna ''That sounds like a dial-up modem. Do you remember those? Me neither."
• Tim Malmsteen - the The Amanuensis "How am I even supposed ta pronounce that?"

edited 4th Jan '15 12:24:04 PM by amporiusrex

Conductor:

• Name: Darius Harrison
• Age: 40
• Gender: M
• Appearance: Gimme a fucking break. Darius stands around 5'3"; he's got a bit of a paunch, but that's just because the six pack's in the back of the fridge. Dresses like he did in his twenties, twenty years ago. He always wears a somber, serious expression, and carries himself with composed precision.
• Personality: Darius is very... grounded. He really doesn't care for the word "ideal;" it makes him think of the idiot politicians who promised to clean up the projects... He loves tracing around where things came from, influences and sources and derivatives. Seeing people pay respect to the past puts a glow in his heart.
• Biography: Darius has been rapping since before people started powering their CANON with it. Born at the perfect time, the joke he throws around at every discussion of "privilege" is that he had one of the greatest privileges of all: he grew up in the inner city right at the catalyst of Rap. He established himself quickly in the old school, but kept his success levels moderate. He lived comfortably for awhile, and even got into the CANON fighting scene for awhile. Decided it wasn't for him. Of course, then the money from royalties and stuff started drying out and would you look at that suddenly that old CANON in the garage is looking mighty appealing.
• Skills:
  • Production: Darius uses an ancient paired turn-table and drum-pad to create beats on the fly, along with a microphone (two turntables and a microphone, in fact). All of this equipment looks like it should be taking punchcards (they do, but the interface is way too slow for live mixing).
  • Internal Clock: Darius has a permanent metronome going on in his head and can keep perfect time.
  • Speech: Darius can talk at length without running out of breath or words. Also grants him incredible lung capacity.

CANON:

• Name: Brass
• Octave: 1 (This is your level. You’re a rookie, you start at 1.)
• Genre: Hip-Hop
  • Example: The beat notably makes a fantastic mashup.
• Design: Brass is 10 feet tall. It has a fairly rectangular body; the torso is divided by a prominent cylinder in the middle. A pair of pipes jut out of the elbows, knees, and upper back, which fire constantly to give Brass consistent movement speed and momentum. The upper chestpiece is a simple orange block, with a shutter in the chest that hides its primary weapons. The lower half is white, and narrows onto the legs. The arms are also fairly blocky, with three-fingered manipulators; its elbows and shoulders are on ball joints. The legs are reverse-jointed, raptoroid, and are almost constantly bouncing it back and forth to Darius's rhythm. Brass lacks a head; its eye cameras and sensor suites are mounted on the front of the torso
• Equipment:
  • B.O.O.M. Box: A piece of hardware that Darius actually doesn't know the Backronym for, the BOOM Box externalizes Brass's sound system as a deployable box; he can remotely recall it into a stack on Brass's shoulder if it gets into any trouble.
  • Momentum cylinder: Created with the intent of giving Brass a consistent rhythm to its blows, the upper and lower halves of the body are able to freely rotate. No equal and opposite reaction goes to waste as Brass continuously spins on an axis.
  • Escalation: A pair of curved knives stashed in Brass's chest, behind the shutters. The shutters themselves charge the swords with electricity, making them stronger the longer he goes without pulling them out.
  • Final Resort: A handgun, heavily modified from a stock military model. The swords and shutters both charge Final Resort with electricit, but the gun itself can't get pulled out without first using Escalation.
• Fugues:
  • Scratch Recovery: Darius can mash out a quick scratch whenever he misses to quickly reel in limbs back into a defensive pose. This wears out Brass's joints, so he can't do it for free without leading to really nasty stiffness later in the fight.
  • Absolute Rhythm: After taking a beating from an opponent that doesn't vary their attacks too much, Darius can lock into the rhythm of an attacker and enter a defensive trance, as long as his opponent maintains that regularity with him.
  • Sudden Pickup: Brass can briefly overcharge its central Momentum Cylinder and boosters as Darius spits an absurdly fast diss to deliver a beatdown; this move becomes significantly weaker every time past the first time an enemy survives it.

edited 11th Dec '14 1:15:45 PM by Taco

I can't resist the musical theme - I'll get working on a sheet quick smart.

Conductor:

• Name: Erik Magnusson
• Age: 32
• Gender: Male
• Appearance: Along these lines◊. Erik has a tendency to wear outfits that wouldn't be out of place in any High Fantasy flick when piloting Crom, but prefers to keep it casual when he's off duty.
• Personality: Erik is a positive and friendly man who takes a lot of pride in his skills as a performer. When it comes to piloting Crom Erik doesn't particularly care if he wins or loses the fight, just as long as he puts on a good show for everyone watching (Erik also happens to love watching Mechas fighting, even if he's controlling half of the action).
• Biography: Erik spent most of his early life living in and around Sweden, moving from country to country as his historian parents went on tours promoting their books. It was during these tours that Erik became interested in the metal scene that has been prevalent in the Nordic countries and those around them for the past several decades. From this, Erik quickly learned how to play the guitar and became the frontman of his very own band. Said band quickly gained mainstream success and after a few years of touring, Erik had a whole lot of money in his bank account. With this newfound wealth, Erik quickly decided that he had to put his skills as a musician to the test and check out this CANON fighting stuff.
• Skills:
  • Bard: Erik is both a skilled vocalist and excellent guitarist, and uses both of these skills in tandem to bring ancient tales of glory to life as he performs. Both Erik's guitar and microphone stand are stylized to fit in with his high fantasy stylings.
  • Scholar: Erik has an extensive knowledge of both history and fiction (primarily fantasy and sci-fi), which provide inspiration for many of his songs.

CANON:

• Name: Crom
• Octave: 1
• Genre: Power Metal
• Example: Hearts on Fire
• Design: Stands roughly 12 feet tall◊. ^{Just an FYI} I tried to write up a description, but felt like I couldn't really convey the image I was trying to get across all that well with it. So I did a bit of searching and found an image similar to what I was looking to describe. If you want a description, let me know and I'll write one up.
• Equipment:
  • Steelguard: A magnetic kite shield that Crom uses with its one handed armaments. When using a weapon requiring two hands, Crom simply attaches Steelguard to its left pauldron and allows it to still serve its purpose (albeit, in a less efficient manner).
  • Pathfinder: A sizable warhammer that Crom always opens up its assault with. Whenever Pathfinder's head strikes an object it unleashes a flashy, but weak, burst of electrical energy. Pathfinder tends to run out of power after a few scant minutes of intense combat, thus forcing Crom to switch to a different weapon when this occurs.
  • Nemesis: An axe capable of being wielded in one hand or two with equal ease. When in use, Nemesis' head glows white hot. While this does mean that the axe's head is superheated, Erik primarily designed this feature with the intention of being distracting in mind rather than any offensive purpose.
  • Rhapsody: A massive and ridiculously sharp greatsword which is only wielded by Crom when Erik feels the battle is reaching its crescendo.
• Fugues:
  • Battle cry: Erik unleashes an extended one note Metal Scream during his performances, which can last upwards of ten seconds, before seguing into a guitar solo. During this time Crom will cease all movement for the duration of Erik's scream, before lunging at its opponent with alarming speed and striking with whatever weapon is in use at the moment.
  • Glorious Solo: When things begin to look grim for Crom, Erik will cease singing and instead let his guitar sing for him. For the duration of the solo (under a minute), Crom will override any crippling damage inflicted upon him during the course of its current battle. Once the solo ends, Crom will gradually begin slowing down and generally weakening.
  • Mighty Chorus: Whenever Erik repeats the chorus of his song, Crom will become more aggressive and damaging in its attacks. The tradeoff being that this results in many more openings for opponents to exploit.

edited 11th Dec '14 2:34:26 AM by Eachiunn

@E-Bro: Accepted, as long as you keep in mind that the skin tight suit is a requirement for piloting a CANON. Erik could wear his armor for promotional reasons, or wear parts of it over the suit while piloting, but he can't be piloting it in full plate.

edited 11th Dec '14 4:33:11 AM by amporiusrex

Musical mechas? This seems like an interesting concept! I'll make a bio if I can find the time. How many spots are open?

I haven't decided on a number yet.

Okay, man, this thing is so interesting.

Questions: in my mind, I see this artsy character who found a way to express himself through Broadway musicals, breaking out of the mold established by his family and I need to put this to paper. Would 'musicals' be classified as a genre? It's just that musicals themselves vary between genres and I think that might be a problem.

Thinking up of fugues, I'm imagining lots of stuff based around singing and dancing. Fugues are all physical, right? No psychological effect on the enemy?

Musicals are a Genre to me.

Also, Fugues cannot be psychological. Hologram technology exists, so you could use illusion and stuff, but "psychic" technology does not exist in this universe. So yeah, they're mostly physical.

The first fugue I had in mind is about dancing. I pictured the mecha being able to create holographic copies of itself that follow a predetermined sequence of moves. If the character manages to perfectly replicate the moves and effectively get in sync with the other dancers, then not only does he disappear amidst the crowd (like in A Chorus Line) but if he manages to attack whilst remaining in sync, those attacks are stronger. It's a hard to accomplish move, not only because he has to be in complete sync with the other dancers, but also because if he gets knocked off sync, he enters a 'confused' state where left is right and right is left for some time, and that could be used by the enemy to decide a fight.

Am I going in the right track? I thought of some fugues regarding rhyming and singing your heart out but I wanted to know if I was doing 'em right.

That's fine.

The crowd is the hologram line, right?

Remember, your CANON is powered by musicals in this case.

Yes.

Alright, let's get to the sheet.

@Rex, works for me. I also wasn't thinking Erik would be wearing full plate while piloting, his armour would mostly be made of lightweight materials that resemble metal designed to look REALLY cool.

edited 11th Dec '14 10:59:51 AM by Eachiunn

Currently listening to techno and trying to figure out how the mech will work. I'll try to post a sheet in the next day or two.

@E-Bro all of the suits are made of the same material. You can customize it as much as you want, as long as the designs are two dimensional.

Alright, that works.

I'm working on one with an Alternative Rock theme to it. It should be done soon, hopefully.

Mine's going have a psychobilly/gypsy punk genre going for it, I think. It shouldn't take long to get done though I'm trying to find a scanner for a sketch.

@Taco accepted

Hm. Not so sure about joining the RP after thinking about it. Lots of stuff in my plate these days.

I'll keep the sheet in my PC just in case I change my mind.

That's fine. Do understand though, if someone else comes around and writes up Musicals before you come to your decision, you won't be able to use it.

Gonna put what I have here by way of reservation and edit in the rest after I get back from my daily struggles. If there's any troubles or suggestions so far they are most welcome.

Conductor:

• Name: Berlin Staccato

• Age: 27

• Gender: Female

• Appearance: Sorry that the sketch is a little rough◊ Hair is light brown, roughly 5'11'' tall.

• Personality: In a word - wired. Constantly moving, figetting and scribbling if she can help it with the few periods of calm she exhibits building to a crescendo of action. In truth her compulsion to be so... busy is the result of anxiety which, while she has medication to control, prefers not to for performance and composing as she feels it saps her creativity and energy. Berlin is fond of humour though hers tends to be a mix of the crude and witty, often reflected in her compostional style - it can be a little concerning for those meeting her for the first time but doesn't give a rats what they think.

Her anxiety stems from her perfectionism, doing anything in a less than exceptional manner leaving her anywhere from frustration to panick attack.

• Biography: Berlin was born in Melbourne, Australia amid its melting pot of cultures and was quickly drawn to the underground psychobillly scene, using her skills on the double bass to jam with most of the bands out there. She still has a scar on her neck from a fight with a thug who tried to steal a bag with her sheet music. However, she had her own ideas for sounds and used most of her creativity for her own compositions, taking up piano to explore more complex harmonies. When she caught wind of a job opening at H.I. Championships it sounded like an opportunity to truly test her skills and explore new frontiers, applying in a heartbeat.

• Skills:

• Composition

• Cite Reading/Perfect pitch

• Martial arts

CANON:

• Name: Baron Tang

• Octave: 1

• Genre: Psychobilly (With eclectic shades from jazz, etc.)

• Example: One , Two
  • Design: Baron Tang is 14 feet tall and has twisting design of overlapping plates that move to accomodate its considerable array of apendages. This CANNON seems to consist of mostly arms and legs - it has 6 arms, the largest being in the 'traditional' position with great but surprisingly articulate claws. Just below and positioned on the back are the thinnest set, each having long scythe-blades able to move like a praying mantis' arms.

  • Equipment:

  • Fugues:

• All Six Rounds -

• Octopus -

• Rantin', Ravin' Refrain -

edited 18th Dec '14 8:18:16 PM by Lt.BGob

Might do a Heavy Metal style character.

Well, this looks mighty interesting.

Was thinking of either generally Classical Music-based mech or the one specifically focused on Gregorian Chant. Would the latter pass as a genre?

Gregorian Chant would fit under "Church Music" (or a better equivalent) , in my opinion. It wouldn't be a genre in itself.