In humanity's far future artificial super powers exist, become a hero or villain, rise up and attain all that you desire. Fame, fortune, glory? It can all be yours if you have the will to take it.
Maddening Science {Tinker Quest}
- Thread starter JohnnyRigmore
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Introduction / Character Creation - 1
- Location
- America
In the far distant future of 4025 humanity discovered how to create super powers.
Special artificial crystalline Meta-Materials that naturally altered the state of reality around them in unique and incredible ways. Furthermore these crystals could be machined and artificed into special jewelry that would allow people to almost supernaturally control these reality alterations. And so the invention of super powers came to be, colloquially known to most as Meta-Users.
There was of course the typical chaos that comes from such world shattering inventions. Wars were waged for the secrets behind Meta-Materials, people bleeding, fighting, dying, for just a drop of reality altering powers in their own hands.
Almost exactly one hundred years later the chaos has finally burned itself out, leaving a broken mess of a species that is slowly trying to pull itself back together.
But none of that is of importance to you, no, all you need to know is that your story starts in one of the last remaining post-scarcity cities on Earth.
Decopolis, a flying mega-city initially founded by ten mega-corporations that have long since faded from the pages of history. Now it travels the airways of the world as a beacon of hope and unity to the rest of the struggling world, of what they may one day be able to reclaim.
It also happens to be the world's greatest concentration of Meta-Materials, Meta-Users, and all the technological advancements that have come from studying them.
So now you know the background of this world, and a little about where your story will start. But the most important question has yet to be asked.
Who are you?
–
[] Boy
[] Girl
–
[] Write In. (Pick a name!)
–
[] You are an orphan, one of the many within Decopolis, what is special about you is the strange necklace you just found that your ninety percent sure is a Meta-Material! Hopefully at least, because if it isn't then the strange almost indecipherable whispers in your head are you going crazy.
[] You are a runaway, one that managed to win the lottery of the lifetime by acquiring a Meta-Material that guarantees a one way trip into Decopolis. Hopefully you can navigate the tangled web of politics that your entry is the one shining mega-city has entangled you in.
[] You are a bio-weapon, an experimental product built to destroy and kill and hidden deep within the bowels of the mega-city. Recently however you have gained sapience and escaped your makers, but the world above is strange and confusing. Your survival hinges on understanding humanity and blending in.
[] Write In. (Can be any cool starting scenario you can think of as long as it starts in Decopolis.)
--
AN: This an idea I've had in my back pocket for a while now and I decided it was finally time to get it out there. I have some plans but to be honest I'm partially winging this, I'm interested to see if we can take this somewhere fun.
Special artificial crystalline Meta-Materials that naturally altered the state of reality around them in unique and incredible ways. Furthermore these crystals could be machined and artificed into special jewelry that would allow people to almost supernaturally control these reality alterations. And so the invention of super powers came to be, colloquially known to most as Meta-Users.
There was of course the typical chaos that comes from such world shattering inventions. Wars were waged for the secrets behind Meta-Materials, people bleeding, fighting, dying, for just a drop of reality altering powers in their own hands.
Almost exactly one hundred years later the chaos has finally burned itself out, leaving a broken mess of a species that is slowly trying to pull itself back together.
But none of that is of importance to you, no, all you need to know is that your story starts in one of the last remaining post-scarcity cities on Earth.
Decopolis, a flying mega-city initially founded by ten mega-corporations that have long since faded from the pages of history. Now it travels the airways of the world as a beacon of hope and unity to the rest of the struggling world, of what they may one day be able to reclaim.
It also happens to be the world's greatest concentration of Meta-Materials, Meta-Users, and all the technological advancements that have come from studying them.
So now you know the background of this world, and a little about where your story will start. But the most important question has yet to be asked.
Who are you?
–
[] Boy
[] Girl
–
[] Write In. (Pick a name!)
–
[] You are an orphan, one of the many within Decopolis, what is special about you is the strange necklace you just found that your ninety percent sure is a Meta-Material! Hopefully at least, because if it isn't then the strange almost indecipherable whispers in your head are you going crazy.
[] You are a runaway, one that managed to win the lottery of the lifetime by acquiring a Meta-Material that guarantees a one way trip into Decopolis. Hopefully you can navigate the tangled web of politics that your entry is the one shining mega-city has entangled you in.
[] You are a bio-weapon, an experimental product built to destroy and kill and hidden deep within the bowels of the mega-city. Recently however you have gained sapience and escaped your makers, but the world above is strange and confusing. Your survival hinges on understanding humanity and blending in.
[] Write In. (Can be any cool starting scenario you can think of as long as it starts in Decopolis.)
--
AN: This an idea I've had in my back pocket for a while now and I decided it was finally time to get it out there. I have some plans but to be honest I'm partially winging this, I'm interested to see if we can take this somewhere fun.
[X] Plan: Annie the Orphan
-[X] Girl
-[X] Annie Hill
-[X] You are an orphan, one of the many within Decopolis, what is special about you is the strange necklace you just found that your ninety percent sure is a Meta-Material! Hopefully at least, because if it isn't then the strange almost indecipherable whispers in your head are you going crazy.
-[X] Girl
-[X] Annie Hill
-[X] You are an orphan, one of the many within Decopolis, what is special about you is the strange necklace you just found that your ninety percent sure is a Meta-Material! Hopefully at least, because if it isn't then the strange almost indecipherable whispers in your head are you going crazy.
Sole_Survivor 77
Better dead than Red
[X] Plan: Biomancer
-[X] Boy
-[X] C-613 , Code name: Chimera
-[X] You are a bio-weapon, an experimental product built to destroy and kill and hidden deep within the bowels of the mega-city. Recently however you have gained sapience and escaped your makers, but the world above is strange and confusing. Your survival hinges on understanding humanity and blending in.
-[X] Boy
-[X] C-613 , Code name: Chimera
-[X] You are a bio-weapon, an experimental product built to destroy and kill and hidden deep within the bowels of the mega-city. Recently however you have gained sapience and escaped your makers, but the world above is strange and confusing. Your survival hinges on understanding humanity and blending in.
- Location
- America
Seems like we have a tie, just got into work but if things don't change before I get off I'll find some kind of compromise. Maybe flip a coin or combine the the two options.
- Location
- America
Seems like there is still a tie, so unless someone decides to come sweeping in at the last minute I'm going to settle on a compromise of combining the two votes.
You'll play an escaped Bio-weapon that takes on the form of Annie the little orphan girl.
This sound good to y'all?
You'll play an escaped Bio-weapon that takes on the form of Annie the little orphan girl.
This sound good to y'all?
Sole_Survivor 77
Better dead than Red
Sure sound like a fair compromise so far
Introduction / Character Creation - 2
- Location
- America
Darkness. A complete and utter void of sensation, where neither sight nor sound penetrated.
Its creators commonly called it Annie, though the name was little more than a convenience for the designers and was something that it cared little about. Annie didn't have a human body at the moment and that meant no capacity to experience the chemical emotions that defined human existence—happiness, fear, or pain were impossible for it. At this moment, the Adaptive Neural/Biological Imitator model number 13 was nothing more than a mass of undifferentiated stem cells contained by a mass of skin covered in a lubricating mucus. Its 'senses' completely constrained to nothing more than a few meager radio signals bouncing back and forth to some other location.
This, it knew intimately, was not all there was to existence. There were several things that were not itself that it had marked internally as significant, the first and most important among these were of course its creators- the beings collectively categorized as humans, and also the ones primarily responsible for the many different 'tests' that it frequently ran.
Annie had been given access by the humans to a large collection of data to help better understand and properly interact with these tests. For example it knew from the data collection that material that enclosed in all directions were known as 'walls, ceilings and floors' and that it was not supposed to try and destroy these things. It also knew that at the start of every test there was an 'obstacle course' and that the purpose of it was to receive a visual update on how Annie had improved since the previous test.
Annie's self reflection on its own knowledge and experience was cut short as it began to receive a familiar static-filled radio signal. Internally marking the start of the tenth known testing cycle it began to prepare itself by pre-forming the basic necessary organelles: a banded eye organ composed of numerous different strains of genetic information, sonic sensor organs to listen to the human's remarks about itself so it could self-adjust, and finally ten 'hands' that it had previously found very useful during all stages of the test.
For now all the organs remained hidden behind the thin skin wall waiting to reveal themselves. Annie was ready and waiting for the small metal wall of its meter by meter container to slide away and open up into the testing area. It had found after repeated testing of its own initiative that its creators, the humans, experienced the emotion 'happiness' when Annie was prepared ahead of time and didn't take a significant time to create organs and manipulators to interact with the test.
When the wall slid open enough for it to slip through it did so immediately, coming into a larger ten meters by ten meter room with similar white metallic walls of its storage area. In one of the room's corners was a strange metallic organ that made some kind of odd screeching sound before Its sonic sensory organs began receiving familiar human sonic emissions. Annie knew that these sonic emissions were something called a 'voice' and that the human's used them to communicate and showcase their emotions, though why this human used this strange and unnatural organ to communicate it was unknown. The data repository the humans gave it insisted that humans used a 'mouth' to project a voice, and the metal organ looked nothing like a mouth.
"Hello and good morning Annie, I can see from our monitoring equipment that you once again have readied yourself for testing, thank you." The familiar human said.
The data said that when a human gives a greeting, giving one in return would promote emotions of happiness and make said human favorable to them. Annie was not human but previous experimentation had revealed that doing so anyway would similarly result in feelings of happiness from its creators.
It forced its skin to split and reveal a single hand, simulating a welcoming motion it had previously observed humans perform in their interactions. Suddenly, an unexpected high-frequency sound emanated from the metal organ. Its sonic sensors picked up the unfamiliar human sounds, and Annie flagged all of them for later analysis.
"EEEE! You never told me it was such a cutie patootie professor!" An unfamiliar female voice exclaimed.
Annie processed the new voice. The tonal patterns and pitch variations indicated heightened excitement—a state associated with the emotion of 'happiness' in excess of what it usually received. It logged the information and assigned a higher review priority to the last twenty minutes of data to determine what it had done to improve the happiness response.
"Sabrina! I told you to be quiet dur-" The more familiar human voice began snapping out, its tonal patterns indicative of 'anger' before it cut off all together and the testing area was bathed in silence. This was not good, though it only knew about the emotion 'anger' through the human-derived data set it knew that it often went hand in hand with unfavorability towards its target.
If it had the time it would have begun reviewing its past data immediately to ascertain the reasoning, but it could not even start before the smooth floor beneath itself began to ripple. Smooth white walls began to rise, transforming the room into an intricate maze, low-velocity turrets emerged from hidden compartments armed with what it knew to be distracting but ultimately harmless ammunition. The human-derived data set had told it that these were meant solely to punish errors and not harm Annie.
The turret closest to it began to whir and Annie began to move into cover while an echolocation organ slowly constructed within its membrane. This testing scenario was vastly different from its usual affairs, which typically consisted of various kinds of wall climbing, endurance tests, and differing environmental factors to ascertain its adaptability speed. The new scenario meant that the adaptations prepared beforehand would not be anywhere as useful, it would keep the eyes and the sonic sensory organ but it reduced the amount of hands to two as it did not see any current need for numerous manipulators.
It would take several minutes for this all to be accomplished and so while that happened it used the intervening time to perform its own experiments on the reaction time of the turrets. Its singular revealed hands slowly peekee out from behind the cover of the maze wall.
The turret whired for one second, two seconds three secon- A loud bang echoed throughout the chamber and Annie retracted their hand quickly as alarms signals indicated a broken skin layer, leaking amniotic fluid. Logging and reviewing the information gained from this encounter took only a few moments, setting a potential baseline for the turret reaction speed and the damage potential.
The cost of sealing the wound was beyond minimal, the efficiency of its modified human skin showcasing itself. It was not done however, tentatively it reached out the hand again, counting up to three seconds before the turret launched another pellet at it. Annie tried to repeat the experiment again but was interrupted before it could even begin.
"Annie, please stop playing with the disciplinary turret." The familiar human said with a tone Annie's database signaled as 'disapproval'. That typically indicates the creators wanted it to cease any current secondary task it was on a return to the primary testing task.
Its echolocation organ wasn't quite done cooking yet but it could get started on the maze anyway if the humans were getting impatient. It began to move through the maze, taking as many different branching paths as it could and filling away all the information within its genetic memory banks.
Several unimportant minutes later when its echolocation organ was finished constructing within its membrane it pushed it out and began to emit high-frequency sonic bursts. In short, while the entirety of the maze was sufficiently mapped out to navigate it, now all it had to deal with was enemy combatant that it was about to encounter.
Around the corner came a creature that vaguely fit the 'monkey' categorization, the major differences seem to be the inclusion of various metallic organ substitutes. It's eyes were replaced by metal variants, as well as what seems to be a hand and a tail, said metal tail was tipped with a dangerous looking spike that glowed a dangerous green. Everything else about it fit more neetly with the monkey category, brown fur, wild uncategorizable sounds from its mouth.
It also seemed to be experiencing heightened aggression based on the way it immediately rushed towards Annie with clear malicious intent. It began preparing additional weaponry, but not for the monkey in front of it which it knew would take to long for. No the weaponry was for the several other creatures that it's echolocation had sensed within the maze.
For this monkey it already had a plan in place, the skin on the top of itself split open and revealed the strange bone like tube that was the echolocation organ. As the monkey rushed it, Annie pushed to echolocation organ to its maximum limit, emitting a long high-pitched sonic attack.
The monkey howled in pain grabbing its own head and shaking it rapidly. Annie took this time to retreat, squeaking down the maze corridor and taking as many different turns as it could while still gaining ground. Something only possible because of those earlier notes it had bothered to take, it was great when a past action revealed an unexpected efficiency.
"Wonderful use of a distraction technique…" The familiar human commented in a tone identified simply as 'neutral' or 'apathetic'. This meant that its actions did not earn any additional favorability but neither did it lose any, a success in Annie's book.
"What the hell? Who are you and wh-" The familiar human voice cuts off again, this time coming with a tone of 'confusion' and 'anger'. Had it done something wrong?
Something has happened, and that will lead to your escape into the wider world. How does it happen though?
[] Someone lets you escape. {You might have an ally out there in the world somewhere, but your creators are looking for you.}
[] There's some kind of attack. {Your creators are on your side, but those who attacked them might not like your existence.}
[] Write In.
--
AN: Phew, that took a little to get just right. Let me know how it feels, I was aiming for Alien but kind of childish perspective and this is definitely took a bit to find the right voice for Annie.
Its creators commonly called it Annie, though the name was little more than a convenience for the designers and was something that it cared little about. Annie didn't have a human body at the moment and that meant no capacity to experience the chemical emotions that defined human existence—happiness, fear, or pain were impossible for it. At this moment, the Adaptive Neural/Biological Imitator model number 13 was nothing more than a mass of undifferentiated stem cells contained by a mass of skin covered in a lubricating mucus. Its 'senses' completely constrained to nothing more than a few meager radio signals bouncing back and forth to some other location.
This, it knew intimately, was not all there was to existence. There were several things that were not itself that it had marked internally as significant, the first and most important among these were of course its creators- the beings collectively categorized as humans, and also the ones primarily responsible for the many different 'tests' that it frequently ran.
Annie had been given access by the humans to a large collection of data to help better understand and properly interact with these tests. For example it knew from the data collection that material that enclosed in all directions were known as 'walls, ceilings and floors' and that it was not supposed to try and destroy these things. It also knew that at the start of every test there was an 'obstacle course' and that the purpose of it was to receive a visual update on how Annie had improved since the previous test.
Annie's self reflection on its own knowledge and experience was cut short as it began to receive a familiar static-filled radio signal. Internally marking the start of the tenth known testing cycle it began to prepare itself by pre-forming the basic necessary organelles: a banded eye organ composed of numerous different strains of genetic information, sonic sensor organs to listen to the human's remarks about itself so it could self-adjust, and finally ten 'hands' that it had previously found very useful during all stages of the test.
For now all the organs remained hidden behind the thin skin wall waiting to reveal themselves. Annie was ready and waiting for the small metal wall of its meter by meter container to slide away and open up into the testing area. It had found after repeated testing of its own initiative that its creators, the humans, experienced the emotion 'happiness' when Annie was prepared ahead of time and didn't take a significant time to create organs and manipulators to interact with the test.
When the wall slid open enough for it to slip through it did so immediately, coming into a larger ten meters by ten meter room with similar white metallic walls of its storage area. In one of the room's corners was a strange metallic organ that made some kind of odd screeching sound before Its sonic sensory organs began receiving familiar human sonic emissions. Annie knew that these sonic emissions were something called a 'voice' and that the human's used them to communicate and showcase their emotions, though why this human used this strange and unnatural organ to communicate it was unknown. The data repository the humans gave it insisted that humans used a 'mouth' to project a voice, and the metal organ looked nothing like a mouth.
"Hello and good morning Annie, I can see from our monitoring equipment that you once again have readied yourself for testing, thank you." The familiar human said.
The data said that when a human gives a greeting, giving one in return would promote emotions of happiness and make said human favorable to them. Annie was not human but previous experimentation had revealed that doing so anyway would similarly result in feelings of happiness from its creators.
It forced its skin to split and reveal a single hand, simulating a welcoming motion it had previously observed humans perform in their interactions. Suddenly, an unexpected high-frequency sound emanated from the metal organ. Its sonic sensors picked up the unfamiliar human sounds, and Annie flagged all of them for later analysis.
"EEEE! You never told me it was such a cutie patootie professor!" An unfamiliar female voice exclaimed.
Annie processed the new voice. The tonal patterns and pitch variations indicated heightened excitement—a state associated with the emotion of 'happiness' in excess of what it usually received. It logged the information and assigned a higher review priority to the last twenty minutes of data to determine what it had done to improve the happiness response.
"Sabrina! I told you to be quiet dur-" The more familiar human voice began snapping out, its tonal patterns indicative of 'anger' before it cut off all together and the testing area was bathed in silence. This was not good, though it only knew about the emotion 'anger' through the human-derived data set it knew that it often went hand in hand with unfavorability towards its target.
If it had the time it would have begun reviewing its past data immediately to ascertain the reasoning, but it could not even start before the smooth floor beneath itself began to ripple. Smooth white walls began to rise, transforming the room into an intricate maze, low-velocity turrets emerged from hidden compartments armed with what it knew to be distracting but ultimately harmless ammunition. The human-derived data set had told it that these were meant solely to punish errors and not harm Annie.
The turret closest to it began to whir and Annie began to move into cover while an echolocation organ slowly constructed within its membrane. This testing scenario was vastly different from its usual affairs, which typically consisted of various kinds of wall climbing, endurance tests, and differing environmental factors to ascertain its adaptability speed. The new scenario meant that the adaptations prepared beforehand would not be anywhere as useful, it would keep the eyes and the sonic sensory organ but it reduced the amount of hands to two as it did not see any current need for numerous manipulators.
It would take several minutes for this all to be accomplished and so while that happened it used the intervening time to perform its own experiments on the reaction time of the turrets. Its singular revealed hands slowly peekee out from behind the cover of the maze wall.
The turret whired for one second, two seconds three secon- A loud bang echoed throughout the chamber and Annie retracted their hand quickly as alarms signals indicated a broken skin layer, leaking amniotic fluid. Logging and reviewing the information gained from this encounter took only a few moments, setting a potential baseline for the turret reaction speed and the damage potential.
The cost of sealing the wound was beyond minimal, the efficiency of its modified human skin showcasing itself. It was not done however, tentatively it reached out the hand again, counting up to three seconds before the turret launched another pellet at it. Annie tried to repeat the experiment again but was interrupted before it could even begin.
"Annie, please stop playing with the disciplinary turret." The familiar human said with a tone Annie's database signaled as 'disapproval'. That typically indicates the creators wanted it to cease any current secondary task it was on a return to the primary testing task.
Its echolocation organ wasn't quite done cooking yet but it could get started on the maze anyway if the humans were getting impatient. It began to move through the maze, taking as many different branching paths as it could and filling away all the information within its genetic memory banks.
Several unimportant minutes later when its echolocation organ was finished constructing within its membrane it pushed it out and began to emit high-frequency sonic bursts. In short, while the entirety of the maze was sufficiently mapped out to navigate it, now all it had to deal with was enemy combatant that it was about to encounter.
Around the corner came a creature that vaguely fit the 'monkey' categorization, the major differences seem to be the inclusion of various metallic organ substitutes. It's eyes were replaced by metal variants, as well as what seems to be a hand and a tail, said metal tail was tipped with a dangerous looking spike that glowed a dangerous green. Everything else about it fit more neetly with the monkey category, brown fur, wild uncategorizable sounds from its mouth.
It also seemed to be experiencing heightened aggression based on the way it immediately rushed towards Annie with clear malicious intent. It began preparing additional weaponry, but not for the monkey in front of it which it knew would take to long for. No the weaponry was for the several other creatures that it's echolocation had sensed within the maze.
For this monkey it already had a plan in place, the skin on the top of itself split open and revealed the strange bone like tube that was the echolocation organ. As the monkey rushed it, Annie pushed to echolocation organ to its maximum limit, emitting a long high-pitched sonic attack.
The monkey howled in pain grabbing its own head and shaking it rapidly. Annie took this time to retreat, squeaking down the maze corridor and taking as many different turns as it could while still gaining ground. Something only possible because of those earlier notes it had bothered to take, it was great when a past action revealed an unexpected efficiency.
"Wonderful use of a distraction technique…" The familiar human commented in a tone identified simply as 'neutral' or 'apathetic'. This meant that its actions did not earn any additional favorability but neither did it lose any, a success in Annie's book.
"What the hell? Who are you and wh-" The familiar human voice cuts off again, this time coming with a tone of 'confusion' and 'anger'. Had it done something wrong?
Something has happened, and that will lead to your escape into the wider world. How does it happen though?
[] Someone lets you escape. {You might have an ally out there in the world somewhere, but your creators are looking for you.}
[] There's some kind of attack. {Your creators are on your side, but those who attacked them might not like your existence.}
[] Write In.
--
AN: Phew, that took a little to get just right. Let me know how it feels, I was aiming for Alien but kind of childish perspective and this is definitely took a bit to find the right voice for Annie.
[X] Someone lets you escape. {You might have an ally out there in the world somewhere, but your creators are looking for you.}
[X] Someone lets you escape. {You might have an ally out there in the world somewhere, but your creators are looking for you.}
- Location
- France
[X] Someone lets you escape. {You might have an ally out there in the world somewhere, but your creators are looking for you.}
- Location
- America
Seems like the vote is pretty definitive 
Next post will get us into the actual meat of the quest and begin part where it becomes an actual plan quest. It's the weekend so I'll have a lot more time to write, I predict the next update should be in maybe today or tomorrow? Really depends on how it all flows and my level of inspiration.
Next post will get us into the actual meat of the quest and begin part where it becomes an actual plan quest. It's the weekend so I'll have a lot more time to write, I predict the next update should be in maybe today or tomorrow? Really depends on how it all flows and my level of inspiration.
- Location
- America
Apologies for the significant delays, real life has decided to be inconvenient an inconsiderate