Mythril Aces Re(Union): A Rebooted Real Robot RP

My 26 year old Feddie is on the edge of non-existance!

• Name: James Perry
• Callsign/Title: Dark Angel
• Faction and Rank: Earth Federation - Lieutenant
• Gender: Male
• Age: 22
• Appearance: Naturally thin, having a high metabolism, and slightly smaller than average, with olive skin which shows his Native American descent, and brown hair. His hazel eyes always seem amused and twinkling, and a cheeky smile is permanently plastered on his face.
• Personality: James has a fairly relaxed attitude towards work, not stressing over things and generally coasting through life, rarely taking situations seriously, often cracking jokes about them and always aiming to remain happy. He also has a trickster nature within him, often playing practical jokes too, all while keeping an ear on the ground for news and gossip, with which he furthers his own jokes.
• Backstory: Born in the slums of North America, to his parents who had quite low-paying jobs, barely enough to get by, even when they took second ones. So, in order to help out and get some income, James, while not joining any of the crime syndicates, served as a neutral information broker, helping out his parents and two siblings, even getting them a treat or two once in a very long while, and learning how to make do, even with limited resources.

Although a local police force operated in the area, they were underfunded, and the various gangs were left alone, and trusted not to fight any major turf wars, due to the balance that had existed since the gangs rose from the ashes of their predecessors. Then, one of the syndicates (named Heroes for being a large heroin importer) got their hands on a heavy frame and two light ones. Naturally, they started expanding and it soon became a rather destructive gang war, the Heroes, rival allied gangs and the suddenly majorly funded and beefed-up police force battling it out, and collateral damage not being of particular concern.

Before the situation could get any worst, the PDF, working with Aerospace and even SI Can D, replied with their own frames and soldiers, destroying all of the gangs in the area within a month, and also leaving the slums in that area heavily damaged. James' parents dying in both the initial battle and the crossfire, and him and his siblings faced with no income, and possessing a healthy desire for vengeance, joined the army. James was snapped up by SI Can D, his brother by the Peacekeepers, and his sister by Aerospace, working as a technician.

After being trained in SI Can D, who familiarized him with much better surveillance technology and a few other techniques, James was deployed into Venus, both to make it safer for the colonists, and to destroy various syndicates from the inside.

Serving for 3 and a half years in Venus, James' was redeployed in Hamal, instructed to go and investigate a Christian militant cult with suspected Commonwealth sympathies, while in the middle of going undercover in a powerful syndicate, he was discovered, along with the other members of his team, ratted out by a brainwashed member of the group, despite everyone taking lessons by a psychologist to stop such a thing from occurring.

Stuck in the large, heavily guarded base in the middle of nowhere, and their communications being cut, as well as the cult having managed to land two Federation frames and a dozen Centauri ones, the situation was bleak. Indeed, James only just managed to make it out, having gotten into one of the Federation frames and, with only a manual and natural skill to aid him, getting out and to help, albeit the rest of his team killed. This stunt earned him his nickname, his use of the Shark earning him the "dark" part of it.

His natural skill with frames got him drafted into Aerospace Corps, although working closely with SI Can D, and choosing the frame that got him out of the situation in Hamal, James continued to work diligently, adapting well to the situations that were thrown his way as a pilot.

• How you became a knight/ace: Skill, experience with SI Can D as well as powerful friends in SI Can D.

• Frame Name: The Spike
• Frame Model: Shark
• Weapons Loadout: A LFR-a Big Brother and a FAS-W, although James does switch them with other weapons. His slots are taken up with 4 grenades, 2 prism clouds, 2 flares, a repair kit and both HP and Burst ammo.
• Appearance: Painted a very dark blue, so much that it might as well be black and kept in good condition and without insignia by James so as to not defeat the entire point of having a Shark. The fin, hands/claws and frame itself is sharpened and spiked where it wouldn't actively hamper the frame so as to make any heavy or medium frames pay for ramming into it, and to make carrying to guns viable.

edited 25th Jul '14 5:06:24 AM by Tricksen

Weapons load edited: no pistol. As for the Skype conversation, I was/continue to be there.

Hydrall has been scarce recently, I am afraid. It's mothers day weekend and shenanigans may abound. We cannot know for certain, except that (as it is Hydrall we are talking about) it likely invovles Cakes, crushed dreams and improvised explosives.

It's a lot to process in his backstory and that might need some revisions, however a much larger concern is that Federation sign ups are closed and I am hesistant to delve deep into it in terms of revision until I know whether Hydrall is willing to

／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼ ?

Wow, how did I miss that?

I've been busy with finals, exams, essays, my job, and murdering several of my neighbors with the rusty end of a toilet plunger.

They started it.

Tricksen: Aces actually are generally ranked up some after being recruited. Perhaps to 2nd Lieutenant? Other than that, I think we can approve you! You put a rare amount of effort into your backstory. I like it!

Also, the Peacekeepers function more as an FBI or SWAT force at this point - They're smaller, but decently funded and generally serve as SI Can D's muscle. It would be more accurate to say simply local police, or even the negligent security forces of a corporation who cared little for the area they controlled besides as a workforce.

Either way, welcome to the team!

Tricksen: Aces actually are generally ranked up some after being recruited.

On that note, isn't Lemurian's 1st Class Pilot too low, too?

Lemurian's pilot is totally green and got promoted out of the academy though so it seems sensible to me.

Okay, edited it. Glad to be playing .

Character

• Name: Roland Jayne Frost
• Callsign: Rodeo
• Faction and Rank: Federation, Lieutenant
• Gender: Male
• Age: 25
• Appearance: Roland's messy mop of brown hair is invariably hidden underneath a cowboy hat when he's off-duty (quite where he got it is a mystery, and he refuses to be drawn on the subject). His skin is fair, though he is slightly tanned. On his uniform's belt he wears a holster that is never without a pistol. The pistol in question is one that holds quite a lot of sentimental value for him. That aside, his build could be described as stocky. Roland's eyes are a very dark brown.
• Personality: Fiercely independent, Roland is rankled by authority more than anything. He feels more positively about his place of birth – Midgard – than he does the Federation, whom he sees as bungling most things they try to do. Indeed, he feels that if you’re going to do something, you’re going to be best off doing it yourself. However, he still prefers it vastly to those stinkin’ Cents and their backwards ways.
• Backstory: Born on Midgard, Roland quickly learnt that you couldn’t rely on hand-outs if you wanted to get by. Once he was old enough – having clawed his way past every obstacle life could throw at him - he enlisted in a pirate gang. However, it was not to last: during a Federation anti-piracy campaign, he was the sole survivor of the crew. Noting his skill, they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: become a privateer for the Federation or else.

Grudgingly he accepted, and he was given an old, worn out Centauri Spitfire to ensure deniability. The controls were modified to suit Federation pilots better.

• How you became an ace: The event that really "made" Roland was an otherwise unremarkable raid on a Centauri ship. However, though the mission was ultimately a success and he was forced to flee for his life as the sole survivor. Realising that things had become too risky, his superiors quietly began debating what to do with the privateer. It was during this time that a talent scout for the Aces came across him.

Frame

• Frame Name: Bull
• Frame Model: Magellan
• Weapons Loadout:
  • Kite: Bears the stencilled legend “The Good Book”.
  • MFR-A Assault Rifle: It has the inscription “Catch.” stencilled on the side.
    • All the Flack ammo. All of it.
• Appearance: Generally resembles a standard Magellan, but it has a representation of a bull’s head proudly painted on the front.

Not entirely sure on the Kite yet, but here's my sign-up.

Quick question: can the Kite and MFR-A get used at the same time?

edited 13th May '14 2:54:49 PM by Flanker66

Character

• Name: Wren Taliaferro
• Callsign/Title: Songbird
• Faction and Rank: Centuari/5th Knight (Warrant Officer)
• Gender: Female
• Age: 43
• Appearance: Tall (about 5'11") and easily described as austere, there isn't much to her body beyond height and the permanent presence of what some have called a dopey grin. Her hair is black that's starting to turn to gray every few months when the dye starts to fade and kept short, neat. Her eyes are a watery green color that aren't worth much of a second glance. Her skin is an indifferent coffee color. No matter her duty attire or the weather she always seems to throw an issue cardigan over it.
• Personality: At one time, and probably still in her heart, Wren cared deeply enough about the future of her country to sign up for the armed forces. Brave, quick wits, loyalty and a steady hand on the trigger got her recruitment into the Knights. Not to mention rather... enthusiastic at recreational functions that anecdotally almost got her tossed out a few times. More then twenty years later the former seems to have been lost overboard in the storm of constantly fatiguing active service, leaving the latter to take it's place with a tempering world-weariness. She spends a lot of time sprawled over furniture starring into space or inflicting "advice" on those nearby when off duty.
• Backstory: Wren's nativity isn't exactly clear. At the very least she spent her brief retirement on New Tyne. Alone. As far back as living companions can remember she never recieved or sent any personal messages, took leave to see family or even so much as mentioned her birthday. For twenty years at least, her home was the Centauri armed forces. Enlisted in the Royal Fleet at eighteen she started her career as an ordnance technician before being accepted for frame training. Most of her time with the Navy was spent on carriers where she had a good opportunity to hone her skills as a pilot against some of the Federation's best in the chaos of fleet combat. Her performance was notable enough to cause her selection for the Knights a number of years later. She was still on the front lines when her resignation letter reached the appropriate desk six years ago. Somewhat reluctantly, while Wren had never particularly distinguished herself in a flashy manner there's always a need for that certain sort of quiet reliability, her request was granted. Using her retirement to pursue such exciting activities as doing nothing and taking the odd dinner at the NCO Club four years passed by before anyone really noticed. Circumstances of some sort convinced her to rally to the colors two years ago and after undergoing refresher training she was sent back into the field.
• How you became a knight/ace: Selected from the most promising Royal Fleet frame pilots of her era.

Frame

• Frame Name: None
• Frame Model: AMF ZL-77E Invoke
• Weapons Loadout:
  • FBPB 'Summoner' (primary)
  • PDW-5 'Mafioso' (secondary)
• Appearance: Standard Invoke. Old, always a little dirty despite repeat cleanings. Painted matte black with no other markings beside registration stenciling.

edited 12th May '14 7:35:21 PM by hotelkilo

I object to a Fed getting all the flack ammo ever. We need some.

Unless you're planning on enforcing weight, and making it too heavy to fly.

Uhm...I'm just gonna put this up here for approval. But if the rest of slots are full and someone who hasn't already got a character comes and wants to play a Centauri, I'll withdraw Rozaliya and focus on Lydia.

CHARACTER

Name: Rozaliya Mikhailova
Callsign/Title: Princess
Faction and Rank: Centauri Fifth Knight
Gender: Female
Age: 30
Appearance: Medium tall and slenderly built, Rozaliya is an image of classical beauty, with pale skin and modest features. Her characteristic snow-white hair is always perfectly smooth, and her hands well manicured. But her face is partly obscured by a gilded black Columbina mask that she never takes off, from behind which her ice cold blue eyes can be seen.
Personality: Quiet and reserved, Rozaliya hardly ever speaks, but when she does, it is in the haughty tones one might expect from a young noble, which is the reason for her title. She also have a great fondness for items of luxury. Still, she is well disciplined, and demands the same from those under her. Despite these traits, however, she is known to smile on occasions.
Backstory: Rozaliya is the only remnant of the noble Mikhailov family, who back on Mishi was a front for a successful mafia family and laundered money for them. Though Rozaliya was the eldest child and thus privy to a few of the family secrets, she knew nothing of the criminal connection, and instead lived a life of blissful ignorance and luxury for a great part of her life. However, when the regional government finally found out about the family's criminal dealings, the family fortune and estates were seized. Rozaliya was one of the few family members to be found innocent of any criminal dealings, and thus was free to continue her life, but the loss of her family's economy meant that her choices were now severely limited. Viewing it as her only hope to restore her family's status, she joined the Knights with the aim to one day have the status of her noble family cleaned (either through military prowess or marriage) and return to her life of luxury.
How you became a knight/ace: While her offensive skills were deemed average at best, her piloting skills were recognized during her time in the military. She excelled in a supportive role, and was an essential part of several skirmishing parties. Her promotion to knighthood was secured when she dove into enemy lines to heal her squad commander, a high-ranking noble.

FRAME

Frame Name: Bona Dea
Frame Model: Aegis
Weapons Loadout: Reconstructor Nanomachines and a HP-108 Heavy Beam Pistol
Appearance: Standard model Aegis, with a black colour scheme.

edited 13th May '14 2:18:09 PM by Lemurian

I am not final word on this but could I recommend having the Mikhailov family source of corruption who basically fronted and laundered money for the local mafia, only to have their criminal ties discovered.

As long as Rozaliya herself wasn't implicated, she could have the motivation of restoring prestige to the family name which has since been tarnished. This would lend to the Impoverished Patrician angle you have going and make things a little more clear cut.

Your choice here, but recovering a tarnished family name [or if you want to push the marriage angle, replacing/merging it into a different family] is easier than creating one from scratch. Especially since you could probably rebuild your reputation a little during peacetime with a few years of solid and loyal service, while making one from scratch requires a lot more reputation than that and would be a bigger gamble when she could more safely just stick back and try to marry into Wealth.

Hotelkilo; My primary worry here would be that your character is a veteran inspite of a lack of experience on your part. I really encourage new players to keep their experience low so any misunderstandings can be passed off as understandable errors. There is four years of canon and history here which a lot of Vets draw on while some early disputes with Sabre have shown that modern military knowledge =/= immediate understanding of the Mythril 'Verse.

Secondly, I don't really see much of a character arc or anything that the character could be doing. My initial reaction was worrying because I've designed a similarly passive character [though I built in more hooks] but only as a foil to a very active Squadron [Determined, Deathseeker and Blind Patriot]. I have a few other points built in [Alcoholic, Survivor's Guilt, Sarcasm] which I don't see in yours; without something, she might be a very boring character to interact with and to play. It seems like even in her bio that everyone just slides off her and no one really gets too attached.

This is again, not final but serious advice to consider.

Flanker, I think your backstory needs some reworking. Part of me is confused about how you reused by song, though I appreciate the shout out. Hydrall just came to me with an idea that I really, really like so I'll spare you my suggestion.

The last point though is that I'd try to keep the hat and weaponry to military standard; keep it to him being "attached" to his pistol, or having a sentimental old pair of Pistols that he keeps in a box somewhere.

I don't know about Cowboy hats in the army as well but maybe they there is some regimental variant that works. Just make sure that if you do have it as something that you wear in uniform then play it as something he picked off a list of selected off a list of available hats rather than one he brought himself. If it is something that he only wears out of uniform, then you're fine.

edited 13th May '14 2:00:29 PM by Fauxlosophe

Good idea. Edited.

I made all the necessary edits. Thanks for the critique, Faux.

I hope it's now acceptable.

It begins.

Aces.

Knights.

Flanker: Accepted with edits. Yay.

Lemur: Sounds fine by me. Just keep in mind Faux's words and it'll all go fine!

Hotelkilo: Personally I'm inclined to accept you, but I'd like to hear your response to Faux first.

edited 13th May '14 8:36:09 PM by Hydrall

Applications still open? Edit: Wow, looks like I got in just in time, the 24th application exactly (though one of the ones before me hasn't been accepted)

• Name: Reid Haddad
• Callsign/Title: Malware
• Faction and Rank: Centauri, 7th Knight
• Gender: M
• Age: 27
• Appearance: Tall and lanky, extremely pale. Broad shoulders and noodley limbs. Stringy, shoulder-length dark hair, dark circles around his eyes. Sharp nose that juts out starkly from an otherwise flat face.
• Personality: Extremely unusual and aloof. Antisocial — often off doing his own thing. His appearance is unsettling, and his tendency to mumble to himself or laugh at seemingly random intervals doesn't help his popularity. He doesn't seem to understand typical human behavior, and definitely doesn't even try to imitate it. Military structure makes sense to him, however, and he responds to any order with a very clear "Right away, sir." Fascinated by electronics, both in form and function, and can usually be found either fiddling with some device or screwing around on his custom-built computer.
• Backstory: Descended from Arab and Anglo American settlers and born into a poor family in Atlantia, Reid Haddad trained and studied for some years in order to make squire selection. He wanted to be a Knight out of a desire to "make a difference" — the prospect of working as a local repairman was tempting, but wasn't large enough in scale for him. Those who are passingly familiar with Reid call him a genius; those who know him even slightly better call him a savant, and indeed he was diagnosed autistic at age 7. Prior to enlistment he had a few near-miss brushes with the law, featuring allegations of hacking and intentionally causing a blackout. To this day, Reid's only comment on those incidents is a mumbled "Those charges were dropped."
• How you became a knight/ace: promotion from squire on recommendation of a sponsor, who also smoothed over concerns about Reid's arrest record.

• Frame Name: Condition Red
• Frame Model: Dyrnwyn
• Weapons Loadout:
  • Cowl Kinetic Assault Uzi
  • Jammer
• Appearance: Stock Dyrnwyn with a dull red paint job (w/some white and black accents) and a black-and-red "low battery" symbol on the otherwise-white left shoulder.
  • Note: Reid is very eager to make some customizations to the cockpit and the interface, but his petitions to that end have been repeatedly denied. This is because any such changes would have to be reverted if another pilot were to take over. While Reid understands this somewhat, he continues to request official permission to implement his ideas twice a week.

Incidentally I feel like other Centauri characters might have heard of mine, or at least they're aware of him as "that lowborn criminal retard"

edited 19th May '14 6:16:24 PM by EponymousKid

I wouldn't have major objections to him or anything, but are you sure this is the sort of character you'd actually have fun playing as? Speaking from experience, playing an antisocial loner tends to get really boring, really fast, especially for the player himself.

Also, seeing as we've no canonical aliens, why's his skin near-green? I've never encountered or heard of such a skin tone, at least outside of rare genetic disorders or iron deficiency. I don't think this was made clear in the OP, but it's canon that the Cents have commonly-available gene therapy technology (AKA "synthing"), so genetic causes of that could be fixed with ease. Did he suffer from mythril poisoning or excessive cosmic radiation exposure, or something? Of course, I'm sure you could create alternative reasons for the skin color or reasons for him not to have taken gene therapy, but it's definitely something you should be aware of.

edited 18th May '14 8:15:20 PM by darksidevoid

I said "almost", "slight", and "-ish", man — his skin isn't actually green, it can just sort of look a little green under certain lighting conditions. but it's a detail I put in there to emphasize how alien the character is. If it's a big deak I can change it to "really pale"

And if he's working in a small group he'll be brushing up against people and he'll be relatively talkative. He just doesn't start conversations, is all. Trust me, the last thing anyone will accuse the character of being is uninteresting.

edited 18th May '14 11:07:47 PM by EponymousKid

Gotcha. In that case, I've got no problems with him. I kinda thought that might be what you were going for with the green skin and all, but I just wanted to make sure, in case you intended for him to be literally green or something. That you'll be able to have fun playing him and have him interact with other characters - and thus keep up motivation to post - was the more important thing by far, anyway.

Belated disclaimer: I'm not a GM, to be clear.

edited 18th May '14 11:29:35 PM by darksidevoid

In the end we all bow to based Hydrall.

Hail Hydrall.

HAIL HYDRALL!

HEIL HIT-

Oh, sorry, sorry, forgot. New management.

HAIL HYDRALL!