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Petals of Titanium -- My Life as a Mecha Setting Bridge Bunny Quest

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[x] The Imperial Navy of the United Solar Empire (in exile)

My motives here are simple: If I want grunge, I'd go for Moridrah's Sea of Flames. So let's have pristine white and gilded halls on our bridge!
 
[x] The Coalition for Free Spacers -- CFS

Let's be the Insurrectionists!

Except, you know, not sucky?
 
[x] The Imperial Navy of the United Solar Empire (in exile)

Because sod those filthy traitors and their coup d'etat.
 
[x] The Alliance for an Independant Saturn -- AFIS

though CRISP UNIFORMS are good too
 
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Update 001: Coffee
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    • The Imperial Navy of the Solar Empire (in exile): 15

    The Alliance for an Independent Saturn -- AFIS: 10

    The Coalition for Free Spacers -- CFS 5:

    You give yourself a quick uniform inspection in the mirror -- a crisp, turquoise jacket, buttons and trim in brightly polished silver, with a straight, knee-length skirt, white leggings and the only pair of spacer shoes you've ever seen that manage to at least look sharp and solid. The end result is flashy, and somewhat ornate, even if all the real braid and finery gets saved for special occasions.

    The first time you put the uniform on, you were a little shocked by the sheer amount of innovation and technology that went into making such a uniform halfway functional in zero gravity -- smart fabric in the skirt and tunic to make it hold its shape without being so rigid as to be useless. The empire has never been above spending a great deal of money in order to preserve the illusion of effortless perfection.

    Satisfied that your appearance can at probably withstand the critical eye of Captain Andre should you meet her in the shaft, you close the storage panel, tuck your interface gloves into the pocket of your tunic, and begin to key open the hatch. Before you do, however, you freeze, glide back over to your workstation, and retrieve the one thing that you've forgotten -- a small, black box hanging from a long cord, which you swiftly put over your neck, and tuck beneath the collar of your shirt. You never want to forget that.

    A second later, you have the hatch sliding open with its familiar, quiet hiss. You push yourself cautiously out into the upper crew shaft, first making sure that no one is hurtling toward you in either direction. The ship is understaffed enough that people are frequently in more of a rush than is, strictly speaking, safe. The upper crew shaft -- which becomes a hallway when the Titanium Rose enters into a gravity well or docks with a station -- is a narrow hallway lined with cabin hatches, up and down verticals dotting the shaft at regular intervals, wall and floor paneling in a less vibrant version of the blue and grey colour scheme of your uniform. This whole process has used up five of your precious minutes already; you have 25 left to breakfast and be at your station in time for your routine bridge shift.

    Contrary to your dream, it promises to be a less than boring one, if not so exciting as a sudden full blown invasion. After weeks of uneventful patrolling, without so much as a glimpse of petty pirates or smugglers, let alone anything really worrisome, you're approaching the small, barren moon of Phoebe and its lonely watchpost. At this point, even the meagre accommodations that such a small and isolated base can offer have most of the crew operating with an air of quiet excitement, yourself included.

    With a yawn, you push off down the hallway, offering the perfunctory greetings you can muster to passing crewmembers before you've had your coffee. The shaft has more than a few of them; you're hardly the only one who leaves things this close when it comes to shift change. A few metres down from your cabin, you grab the handle above a downward vertical port, and push yourself into it head first. Almost everyone is violently ill their first time in zero gravity, without an up or a down aside from the way you're currently facing, but such a reflex has thankfully long since been drilled out of you by sheer exposure. You continue floating down the vertical, letting a deck go past, then catch yourself on the next handle, bringing your momentum to a complete stop, and letting yourself drift out into the mess hall.

    The mess hall is an exercise in pageantry, you sometimes think. A testament to the navy's commitment to making sure all of the ship's facilities are usable in every environment it's rated for -- there are actual tables and benches. The former are mostly decorative at the moment, and the latter are useful primarily for the straps built into them to prevent diners from simply floating away. Long experience has also taught you, however, that the tables simple solid presence means that there's always a surface to grip in order to stop or maneuver oneself, even in the middle of one of the single largest crew spaces onboard.

    "Well, someone's running late," a feminine voice drawls in a distinctive Titan accent, its owner waving a hand to catch your attention before you can move past. You stop so suddenly that she has to shoot out a hand to grab you, in order to keep you from careening off in the wrong direction entirely. "Wow, you are tired, she says, after a quiet laugh at your expense, her ordinarily high, piercing laugh stifled with one hand. "Oh come on, don't look at me like that, look -- coffee always helps."

    Sure enough, she pulls a breakfast packet, fresh from the dispenser, out of her tunic pocket, letting it drift lazily toward you. Now that you're no longer at risk of flying into anyone, you catch it, and push yourself down into the seat beside her, clipping a belt around your waist to keep you on it -- it beats having to join one of the fast moving lines formed in front of the room's three food dispensers.

    Anja Li is your fellow ensign, a young woman of about your age with sandy brown hair, blended Eurasian features, and a slightly sardonic lilt to her mouth that's more than a little infuriating on occasion. Like when she's laughing at you for something which, quite frankly, was her fault more than yours. And you've had many occasions to observe this -- she's with you on most of your bridge shifts. She can be good company, even if her background is sufficiently different from yours to occasionally lead to awkwardness. Unlike you, who came to Saturn before the age of ten as a refugee, Anja is a third generation Titan, a relative rarity for even a junior naval officer. Even now, a decade out from Titan becoming the de facto capital and Saturn becoming the sum total of the exiled United Solar Empire, the navy's officer corps is not precisely hospitable towards actual Saturnians, even as necessity has made it incrementally more welcoming toward commoners in general.

    You break the seal on your breakfast packet, and immediately fish out the black pouch labelled COFFEE ONE CREAM in five different scripts. A practiced gesture snaps off the plastic tab at the top, triggering the pouch's self heating mechanism. Just the feeling of it growing hot in your hand is enough to breath a little life into you, although waiting for the instructed 30 second brew time to elapse is as torturous as always.

    Who are you, then? Where did you come from, how do you act and present yourself toward people, once you've had enough caffeine to actually be awake and alert? And while we're here, just what kind of ship is the Titanium Rose?

    OoC: The character traits are going to be tallied as one set -- try to come up with an interesting combination that other people will enjoy. The ship vote is going to be counted separately from the character traits.

    Name:
    [ ] Breana Zhou
    [ ] Jin-ae Kyo
    [ ] Amani North
    [ ] Ciara O'Shae
    [ ] Jade Hunter
    [ ] Azrabeth Destiny
    [ ] Write-in

    Personality:
    [ ] Aggressive
    [ ] Bubbly
    [ ] Cold
    [ ] Straight-laced

    Background:
    [ ] The daughter of a penniless knight
    [ ] The illegitimate child of a minor aristocrat
    [ ] The daughter of common soldiers
    [ ] The daughter of common orbital farmers

    What Class of ship is the HMIS Titanium Rose?
    [ ] Flower Class light carrier
    - Well armoured
    - Lightly armed
    - Low-moderate speed
    - 6 mecha capacity
    - Not intended for independent action
    A small, relatively cheap mecha carrier, usually used in conjunction with an escort of 2-3 corvettes to eliminate minor pirate threats or put down small scale colonial unrest. Its slow speed and modest armaments are far from ideal without an escort.
    [ ] Metallic Class frigate
    - Well armoured
    - Well armed
    - Moderate speed
    - 3 mecha capacity
    - Notoriously finicky drive core
    Metallic class frigates are the last generation workhorse of the Imperial fleet, well equipped for their size, ideal either as an escort for larger ships or for light independent duty. Design flaws in the drive array require constant maintenance.
    [ ] Ranger Class heavy reconnaissance craft
    - Lightly armoured
    - Moderately armed
    - ****ing fast
    - 3 mecha capacity
    - Armour gaps
    The Ranger class is designed for long distance scouting in hostile territory. It's got enough firepower and defences to survive limited engagements, without sacrificing too much speed. At the same time, sacrifices did have to be made in the name of that goal -- its armour is very good for its class and role, but is thin or absent in certain less critical areas.
     
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    • [x] Azrabeth Destiny
    [x] Bubbly
    [x] The daughter of a penniless knight
    [x] Metallic Class frigate

    Edit: vote changed
     
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    Note: I forgot to mention this in the post, the character traits are being counted by set, with the ship vote seperate I'm sorry for any confusion for people who have already read/voted.
     
    Plan:Knight of bubbles
    [x] Azrabeth Destiny
    [x] Bubbly
    [x] The daughter of a penniless knight

    [x] Flower Class light carrier

    let the six and the rest of the fleet fight, we're here to keep the bridge calm and nice!
     
    [x] Azrabeth Destiny
    [x] Straight-laced
    [x] The daughter of a penniless knight
    [x] Metallic Class frigate
    ​
     
    [x] Amani North
    [x] Straight-laced
    [x] The daughter of common soldiers
    [x] Ranger Class heavy reconnaissance craft

    Can you smell that? The Professionalism and perfect lockstep march? It makes me tingle all over.

    We also have a somewhat renegade-y buddy, so we'll make for a perfect buddy-cop duo!
     
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    [x] Amani North
    [x] Straight-laced
    [x] The daughter of common soldiers
    [x] Ranger Class heavy reconnaissance craft
     
    I kind of like bubbly characters, but they don't really fit this quest well at all, I feel. Somebody more in control and able to keep their cool feels a lot more appropriate. And if we're from low birth, it feels like a soldier fits more than a knight or aristocrat, and I prefer soldier over farmer, simply because I like the idea that working in a similar capacity is just something your family does and is expected, rather than a climb upwards, as it were.

    [x] Amani North
    [x] Straight-laced
    [x] The daughter of common soldiers
    [x] Ranger Class heavy reconnaissance craft
     
    [x] Amani North
    [x] Straight-laced
    [x] The daughter of a penniless knight

    [x] Metallic Class frigate
     
    [x] Amani North
    [x] Straight-laced
    [x] The daughter of common soldiers

    [x] Metallic Class frigate

    Not!Preussen intensifies
     
    [x] Amani North
    [x] Straight-laced
    [x] The daughter of a penniless knight

    [x] Metallic Class frigate

    I like bubbly, but equally-valiant daughter of a knight sounds nice too.
     
    [x] Jinae Kyo
    [x] Aggressive
    [x] The illegitimate child of a minor aristocrat

    [x] Metallic Class frigate
     
    I'm not too bothered about names, although Amani North seems like it's preferred here, so I'm happy with that.

    Personality-wise, I would've preferred something like "graceful" or "mild-mannered". Seeing the lack of a write-in option, while I'm okay with straight-laced, I prefer "bubbly" just by a little bit, and "straight-laced" has enough of a lead that I'm not worried about anathema "aggressive" taking the lead, even under set voting conditions.

    Who the protagonist's parents are is a question that deserves greater attention, I think. Being the illegitimate daughter of aristocrats may allow us to have a finger on the pulse on the happenings of the navy's aristocratic leadership; even nobles gossip, after all. And being illegitimate provides that extra friction, too, with active and background characters. Being the daughter of a knight is also potentially interesting, because I suspect many of them are mecha pilots (I'm admittedly making an assumption here, we don't have enough information on what knights are exactly), and having the protagonist being a bridge bunny opens a lot of interesting narrative consequences. Is our parent disappointed that we did not follow in their footsteps and have instead joined the ranks of REMFs? Are we predisposed to get along better with pilots, having been raised by one? If our parent is still in active duty, will we ever be in a situation where we end up being in the same battle together? It's potential narrative consequences like these that makes me vote "the daughter of a penniless knight" here, although I suppose it's a little tactical when "daughter of common soldiers" is still in play.

    On similar narrative terms, I'm inclined to vote for the Ranger-class heavy reconnaissance craft, because it's the type of vessel that really accommodates quests more. While Flower- and Metallic-class vessels are undoubtedly better suited for conventional battles, the Ranger-class is probably better suited for more independent action like scouting or hit-and-run missions, something that is relatively more quest-like, especially since we're playing a bridge bunny instead of a captain.
     
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