You saw a thousand new suns blossom in the sky the night the world ended.
For longer than you...
For longer than you...
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The End of the War
- Location
- in the trash
You saw a thousand new suns blossom in the sky the night the world ended.
For longer than you had been alive, there was only the War. Others might have called it by different names, but to you and almost everyone you had known it was simply the War.
At first, there might have been other reasons for fighting. But as the war dragged on and more and more blood was spilled, those reasons were forgotten and cast aside. More and more the war was prosecuted simply to end the war, to finally destroy the enemy. Nothing less than total victory would be acceptable, not after all the blood spilled, after all the decades spent fighting. Peace could only be found when one side had been utterly vanquished. This was the truth you had known all your life.
Total victory. No matter the cost. No weapon or tactic too horrifying to use, no atrocity that could not be justified on the altar of victory. Everything and anything to win, to secure a lasting peace. Nothing else mattered
The tipping point was when the meteor fell. As it descended from the sky, it fractured, splitting into dozens of fragments. Scrambling to recover the fragments, both sides managed to crack the wondrous and terrible secret the meteor held, and arrived at the same conclusion. That with this gift from the heavens, they could create weapons of unthinkable, unfathomable power. Weapons that would end the war once and for all. Weapons that should have been too terrible to use--and yet they used them anyway.
In hindsight, annihilation was the only possible outcome. And so the war ended in a single night. Millennia of civilization and hundreds of millions of lives, all scoured away in an instant. A terrible, final swan song to decades of unceasing, merciless conflict.
Even those who did not die that night only received a stay of execution; they simply wasted away over the following weeks, falling to sickness, to violence, to starvation. The sky turned to the colour of ash and the winds grew harsh and cold; when rain fell it was black and deadly, killing and polluting all that it touched. The very air became suffused with sickness and the land withered and died. Even the oceans became lifeless and poisonous.
And yet, there were survivors, amidst the hollowed out ruins of civilization. Those who did not die to fire or sickness or starvation, stubbornly clinging to life despite the odds. You survived. Even as everyone you knew died around you, even as civilization crumbled in the aftermath, you managed to survive. Though, perhaps death would have been a kinder fate than this hell on earth.
Choose a Background:
[ ] The war spared no one. Towards the last years, the very concept of civilian-hood had ceased to exist. There were only those who contributed to the war effort by fighting, and those who contributed to the war effort in different ways. You were one of the latter. An ordinary person on the sidelines of the war, and yet affected by it all the same.
[ ] You fought, struggled and bled for your side, just another soldier expected to sacrifice everything in the name of victory. You saw the war end in a single night. Watched as your comrades-in-arms succumbed to one thing or another after another in the aftermath. The end has come, but still you continue to fight. You've never known anything else, after all.
[ ] Maybe you were an experiment, one of the many living weapons created to try and tip the scales. Perhaps you were simply an exceptional soldier with the right combination of talent and luck to ascend the ranks. To some you were a war hero, to others a ruthless butcher; you were both revered and reviled. Now, you're just another one of the survivors.
For longer than you had been alive, there was only the War. Others might have called it by different names, but to you and almost everyone you had known it was simply the War.
At first, there might have been other reasons for fighting. But as the war dragged on and more and more blood was spilled, those reasons were forgotten and cast aside. More and more the war was prosecuted simply to end the war, to finally destroy the enemy. Nothing less than total victory would be acceptable, not after all the blood spilled, after all the decades spent fighting. Peace could only be found when one side had been utterly vanquished. This was the truth you had known all your life.
Total victory. No matter the cost. No weapon or tactic too horrifying to use, no atrocity that could not be justified on the altar of victory. Everything and anything to win, to secure a lasting peace. Nothing else mattered
The tipping point was when the meteor fell. As it descended from the sky, it fractured, splitting into dozens of fragments. Scrambling to recover the fragments, both sides managed to crack the wondrous and terrible secret the meteor held, and arrived at the same conclusion. That with this gift from the heavens, they could create weapons of unthinkable, unfathomable power. Weapons that would end the war once and for all. Weapons that should have been too terrible to use--and yet they used them anyway.
In hindsight, annihilation was the only possible outcome. And so the war ended in a single night. Millennia of civilization and hundreds of millions of lives, all scoured away in an instant. A terrible, final swan song to decades of unceasing, merciless conflict.
Even those who did not die that night only received a stay of execution; they simply wasted away over the following weeks, falling to sickness, to violence, to starvation. The sky turned to the colour of ash and the winds grew harsh and cold; when rain fell it was black and deadly, killing and polluting all that it touched. The very air became suffused with sickness and the land withered and died. Even the oceans became lifeless and poisonous.
And yet, there were survivors, amidst the hollowed out ruins of civilization. Those who did not die to fire or sickness or starvation, stubbornly clinging to life despite the odds. You survived. Even as everyone you knew died around you, even as civilization crumbled in the aftermath, you managed to survive. Though, perhaps death would have been a kinder fate than this hell on earth.
Choose a Background:
[ ] The war spared no one. Towards the last years, the very concept of civilian-hood had ceased to exist. There were only those who contributed to the war effort by fighting, and those who contributed to the war effort in different ways. You were one of the latter. An ordinary person on the sidelines of the war, and yet affected by it all the same.
[ ] You fought, struggled and bled for your side, just another soldier expected to sacrifice everything in the name of victory. You saw the war end in a single night. Watched as your comrades-in-arms succumbed to one thing or another after another in the aftermath. The end has come, but still you continue to fight. You've never known anything else, after all.
[ ] Maybe you were an experiment, one of the many living weapons created to try and tip the scales. Perhaps you were simply an exceptional soldier with the right combination of talent and luck to ascend the ranks. To some you were a war hero, to others a ruthless butcher; you were both revered and reviled. Now, you're just another one of the survivors.
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Setting Primer
- Location
- in the trash
Okay, I guess I should actually explain what this quest is.
The Setting:
This quest is set in the RA3: Paradox universe. Paradox, for those of you who don't know, was a seriously awesome game mod for C&C Red Alert 3 (and @open_sketchbook was the main creator).
A brief primer. This quest is set in an alternate version of the Chinese civil war, where due to the vastly different nature of World War II the war did not end in Communist victory in 1949, but continued to drag out for another two decades. The war increasingly turned into kind of pulpy science fiction nightmare, even before a meteor crashed and added not!Tiberium to the fix. The unique properties of this material allowed both sides to develop and mass produce atomic bombs. This quest starts shortly after China was reduced to an irradiated wasteland.
Canonically, what happened after this was that number of the survivors eventually banded together to form the Atomic Kingdom of China, which can be summed up as "atompunk Star Trek". Since we're starting before canon, though, things might go differently.
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Character Creation Pt 2
- Location
- in the trash
Apologies for the delay. I got distracted by a bunch of stuff and also hit a bit of a roadblock with the update. Originally, my intention was to generate a couple of preset characters and let you guys pick one, but I wasn't satisfied with how that was working out because it felt too restrictive.
So I'm going to let you guys choose. Pick one option for each category. Votes will be counted by plan. In addition to voting, you may optionally include a description of your character concept.
During the Civil War, there was something that made you stand out from the rank and file:
[ ] Exceptional skill (Tactical Acumen, Espionage, Bullshit Martial Arts, Soldiering, etc)
[ ] Experimental weaponry/equipment (Rayguns, Personal Shields, Prototype Tanks, etc)
[ ] Augmentation (Cybernetics, Genetic Modification, Cloning)
[ ] Esoteric Bullshit (Psionics, Exotic Physics, etc)
Choose one flaw. This should ideally be tied to the previous option in some way, but it is not strictly necessary.
[ ] Apart from basic human necessities, you are dependent on a constant intake of some sort of drug. (Chemical Dependency)
[ ] Your body is falling apart. This isn't unsolvable, but good luck finding an intact medical facility. (Slowly Dying)
[ ] You're a clone; a vat grown human with a artificially constructed personality. At best, people will find you odd; at worst, you'll be treated as a soulless, subhuman abomination. (Cloning Blues)
[ ] The strange crystal that fell from the sky has many strange properties. One of them is how it can apparently infect living organisms. (Jade Infection)
Background. This section is optional, but will help me to flesh out the MC.
[ ] Name. This must be a Chinese name, and not something idiotic like "Ta Hun Kwai".
[ ] Gender.
[ ] Epithet. Because of your reputation during the war, this is the name that most people will know you by. Pick something suitably zany, like the Child of Entropy, The Machine Made Flesh, Madame Inferno, The Hollow Triplets, The Corpse-Doll of Xinjiang, Marshal Manslaughter, etc. (Yes, those are all valid options)
[ ] Write-in character history/description. Self explanatory.
As you stir from your sleep, you open your eyes to find yourself staring up at:
[ ] The bare concrete ceiling of your holding cell. You've been waking up to the same sight for the past few weeks, much to your frustration. (Pros: More starting supplies. Cons: You're imprisoned.)
[ ] A closed hatch. You had opted to stay in the safety of your vehicle, despite the cramped interior. The sound of raindrops hitting metal serves to remind you why. (Pros: Start with transportation. Cons: Low fuel, concentrated fallout)
[ ] The open sky, grey and blanketed by clouds of ash. You quickly get to your feet and brush the dirt off your clothes. (Pros: None. Cons: None.)
So I'm going to let you guys choose. Pick one option for each category. Votes will be counted by plan. In addition to voting, you may optionally include a description of your character concept.
During the Civil War, there was something that made you stand out from the rank and file:
[ ] Exceptional skill (Tactical Acumen, Espionage, Bullshit Martial Arts, Soldiering, etc)
[ ] Experimental weaponry/equipment (Rayguns, Personal Shields, Prototype Tanks, etc)
[ ] Augmentation (Cybernetics, Genetic Modification, Cloning)
[ ] Esoteric Bullshit (Psionics, Exotic Physics, etc)
Choose one flaw. This should ideally be tied to the previous option in some way, but it is not strictly necessary.
[ ] Apart from basic human necessities, you are dependent on a constant intake of some sort of drug. (Chemical Dependency)
[ ] Your body is falling apart. This isn't unsolvable, but good luck finding an intact medical facility. (Slowly Dying)
[ ] You're a clone; a vat grown human with a artificially constructed personality. At best, people will find you odd; at worst, you'll be treated as a soulless, subhuman abomination. (Cloning Blues)
[ ] The strange crystal that fell from the sky has many strange properties. One of them is how it can apparently infect living organisms. (Jade Infection)
Background. This section is optional, but will help me to flesh out the MC.
[ ] Name. This must be a Chinese name, and not something idiotic like "Ta Hun Kwai".
[ ] Gender.
[ ] Epithet. Because of your reputation during the war, this is the name that most people will know you by. Pick something suitably zany, like the Child of Entropy, The Machine Made Flesh, Madame Inferno, The Hollow Triplets, The Corpse-Doll of Xinjiang, Marshal Manslaughter, etc. (Yes, those are all valid options)
[ ] Write-in character history/description. Self explanatory.
As you stir from your sleep, you open your eyes to find yourself staring up at:
[ ] The bare concrete ceiling of your holding cell. You've been waking up to the same sight for the past few weeks, much to your frustration. (Pros: More starting supplies. Cons: You're imprisoned.)
[ ] A closed hatch. You had opted to stay in the safety of your vehicle, despite the cramped interior. The sound of raindrops hitting metal serves to remind you why. (Pros: Start with transportation. Cons: Low fuel, concentrated fallout)
[ ] The open sky, grey and blanketed by clouds of ash. You quickly get to your feet and brush the dirt off your clothes. (Pros: None. Cons: None.)
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