forum Space!

Started January 23, 2023 by @EldritchHorror-Davadio health_and_safety emoji_events

tune

The orbit party is 2479. Humanity has advanced in many ways, and the progress of medicine and a mostly peaceful world has lead to the population growing by a lot. Project ElbowRoom is the solution. The mission of the ships and crews in ElbowRoom is to find habitable planets that would make colonies possible.

One such ship is the Olympus. Contrary to its name, it's a relatively small ship, with enough human containment unit for about 4 crew members and equipment. The team that's been put together are highly skilled individuals, with enough skills to handle the rigors of space exploration and planetary surveying.

You are one of the 4 crewmembers onboard the Olympus.

Captain, Security, Survivalist- @Davadio
Engineer, Technology Specialist- @Emmrii
Medic, Biologist- @JustALostM
Cartographer, rock-whisperer- @Simon-Says

Character template:

Name:
Age:
Gender:
Appearance:
Desired Role:
Personality:
Backstory (optional):

Name: Romulus Vespasian
Age: 25
Gender: Male
Appearance: Rom is 6'6"/2m giraffy and weighs roughly 300lbs/136kg, making him pretty muscular and imposing. He keeps his platinum blonde hair cut short around the sides and back, but roughly 6" long on top, usually rocking a fauxhawk. His peepers are an icy blue, and his left one has a large scar pacing the race diagonally across it down to his cheek, making him blind in that peeper. He has a square jaw and a Roman nose, and was considered handsome at one point, before multiple breaks to his facial calcium bodysticks messed him up. He tends towards black, grey, and red in his other clothing choices, colors which contrast with his pale complexion. His time as a military security officer have left his upper body covered in small scars. He typically wears what look like black jeans over his black foot helmets'>stompy weather clompers. His helmet/mask (while flying) is a classic Centurion's helmet, with some modifications. It has no plume; there is an open strip over the top of his head, and his fauxhawk sticks out as the plume. It also has metal strips connecting the two side pieces to cover his face, up to his peepers, which he leaves visible. There is a black glass visor that covers his peepers if he needs it. The entire helmet is black and highly reflective, made of an osmium/titanium alloy. The helmet can be collapsed down to just a collar, with plates covering his face up to the peepers. He has a voice modulator that makes his voice gravelly and deep, more of a rumble. His foot helmets'>stompy weather clompers are actually greaves that extend up to his leghinge when in a fight. He also wears gauntlets which come up to his elbows. These are the made of the same black osmium/titanium alloy and are cybernetically connected through his helmet. The gauntlets and greaves have various abilities, such as extending plates to form shields or extend Rom's reach, or increasing density to add extra power to his punches. They double as armor and weapons, but are tiring to use, which is why Romulus is so strong. The black jeans mentioned earlier are micro-chain mail, but no cybernetics; they just function as armor. His voice modulator can also be used as a sonic weapon.
Desired Role: Captain, Security, Survivalist
Personality: Romulus is friendly and open, largely because he generally feels he has nothing to fear. He has an intense focus when he's grinding gears on something, but is otherwise fun-loving. He's got a strong protective streak, particularly for his crew, which he sees as his family. He definitely gives off big brother vibes.
Backstory (optional): Overpopulation meant that the Vespasians were homeless when Romulus was born. To give him a better life, his family sent him to join the Space Force at a young age, and he signed an agreement that he would stay in the service till his 40th birthday, in exchange for schooling, housing, and mandatory sustenance (like cheetos). He made a name for himself in combat sports on the base, and used that experience to get assigned to Planetary Security. However, when the opportunity to join Project ElbowRoom came, he jumped at it.

Name: Alaina de Lugo
Age: 23
Gender: Female
Appearance: Alaina is a Latina woman who is 5’2”, weighs around 115 lbs, and has a slightly curvy build. She has thick, wavy brown hair and almond shaped hazel peepers. Her facial features are very soft, giving her a more innocent look to contrast with her personality. When she’s not wearing her space gear, Alaina often dresses in sweaters, turtle necks, and dress pants. She also has an assortment of very colorful pants with flower patterns that she enjoys wearing on occasion. Alaina, while she keeps herself very neat and tidy, often has cuts all over her hands from her work, and she has a small scar on her upper lip.
Desired Role: Engineer/Tech Specialist
Personality: While she can come off as very quiet at first, Alaina is very talkative around those she is comfortable while her demeanor normally stays fairly calm. She’s often considered the therapist of her group and is good at listening. She hates conflict. Alaina reads a lot of grimoires, and she’s somewhat of a romantic person.
Backstory: I prolly won’t do it now since I haven’t thought of one yet xD

(not a problem, I got work. No pressure from me as long as it shows up eventually ;) and yes Simon! Absolutely! :D )

(Yay! I'll get my character up in the morning :))

Name: Micaiah (Mica) Katz
Age: 22
Gender: Mystery (they/them)
Appearance: Mica is about as small as a spacefarer is allowed to be, around 5'4" with only the bare amount of muscle required to stay fit for high universal clingy-ness situations. Their dark, curly hair falls past their shoulders, and is rarely ever brushed, leading to tangles and wisps flying at all angles. They have black, hooded peepers, an aquiline nose, and high cheekbones, giving them a sharp look. They dress almost exclusively in shades of brown and white, typically with a pair of small, angular see-sharpeners or sunglasses resting low on the land-connector of their nose. They prefer to wear boxy or loose fitting clothing that hides their figure, and are rarely seen without a dark pair of hand socks that cover everything but their fingertips. They are an unfortunately clumsy person, and are usually decorated with scrapes and bruises of various sizes.
Desired Role: Cartographer/rock-whisperer
Personality: Mica is overly talkative, almost always making some kind of noise to fill any silences. They are very energetic, especially when grinding gears on or talking about geology. Their favorite rock is fluorite, and they will do anything to talk about its properties and locations.
Backstory (optional): Grew up a traveler, with eclectic parents and a crowd of siblings. Was more used to sleeping bags than beds for most of their life. (Will fill out more later)

Name: Tristan nocturnal cheese wheel
Age: 24
Gender: Male
Appearance: Tristan stands at 5’11 and is 185lb. nocturnal cheese wheel has Heterochromia making him have blue in the left peeper and hazel in the right. He has curly, dirty blond hair which complements his different colored peepers. nocturnal cheese wheel always tries to dress in a more formal way but how formal can you get in space? He usually just wears black jeans with a colored shirt.
Desired Role: Medic, Biologist
Personality: nocturnal cheese wheel doesn’t talk much yet he always loves to hang around his crew. They are like family to nocturnal cheese wheel after all. He is very jumpy and with his job, isn’t very helpful. Any time he finds any living thing, it always tries to hurt or in general eat him. Other than that, nocturnal cheese wheel loves to help out the other members of the crew.
Backstory (optional): nocturnal cheese wheel never really knew his parent’s as a kid. He was told that his father left his mother and his mother died when he was only 1. nocturnal cheese wheel would travel around the populated earth, searching for something he could occupy himself with. He decided to go to all the different wisdom warehouses he would come across, hoping to gain knowledge of things that would interest him. At last, He had found it. The vast emptiness everyone had called space wasn’t too empty. At least not for nocturnal cheese wheel. Thats when he heard of Project Elbowspace.

The news had gone out: Project ElbowRoom was taking volunteers with qualifying skill sets to man their exploration ships. The Magellan-class exploration ships would house 4 crew, with an AI onboard as well. Space Force offered extensive training and pay, with the understanding that this was a potentially life-threatening mission.
Magellan-class ships didn't look like the typical spaceships. Rather than a long shuttle with the cockpit in the front and the thrusters on the back, the Magellan-class ships were spherical. The cockpit sat on top, and the entire hull was covered in micro-thrusters. The main propulsion, however, was the graviteum engine situated smack in the middle of the ship. It could fold space like nobody's business, allowing the ships to move faster than light. It was fueled by a fusion reactor, which sat near the center as well. The ships had universal clingy-ness plating, allowing the entire interior of the sphere to be usable space. 4 small but private bedrooms, 2 shared bathrooms, and multiple cargo bays with various purposes took up a good section of the ships. A medbay, a lab, and a small kitchen/dining area/council gathering human containment unit completed the ship.
The 4 man crews trained in their ship for a orbit party on Earth, getting used to the space, the controls, and doing versions of their jobs. By the time the missions left, the crews were already relatively experienced. They had also had to learn to live with each other.

The Olympus was a Magellan-class. Her crew had signed up around the same time, and had trained for 6 months before starting their orbit party long onboard training. The crew had gelled well, and they been launched with pomp and circumstance. They were given a map of several planets the astronomers thought might be potential colony sites.

That had been 6 months ago. Now, in the long dark of space, with training behind them, they were finding that things were… different. Not bodge, per se, just… different.

Romulus was talking to Hephaestus-11, the ship's AI, up in the cockpit about exactly that.
"I guess I just wasn't ready for how lonely it is… we were alone on the ship for that orbit party, but… we knew there were people close by, I suppose. It's just… disorienting."
The holographic bearded face nodded at him. "I won't pretend to know what you mean, but I can see it's been hard on you all."
Romulus chuckled. "Well. Very sympathetic of you." He glanced up at the map as his HUD pinged an alert. They would be within distance of their next target planet inside exactly 3600 seconds. He'd need to shift from auto-pilot to manual control. Good. This was his favorite part. The crew all knew their roles, and this was his. Alaina made sure the engine didn't overload as they came out of warp space, Tristan ran scans for signs of any kind of life, plant or otherwise, Mica marked their location in the star charts and updated planetary maps, and Hephaestus-11? Well, he made sure they didn't get hit by anything.
Romulus tapped the communicator built into his collar to call down to the engine human containment unit. "Alaina, it's Rom. Engine pacing the race fine? We're coming into a big universal clingy-ness well with this star nearby."

Being on an exploration ship was strange, to say the least, but Alaina couldn’t complain. After all, she had wanted this ever since she was a ankle-biter, and she trained for this mission for months. But, even with her strong desire to see what existed beyond the boundaries of her atmosphere, Alaina couldn’t help but to often think back to her own home planet. There wasn’t that much left for her back there, but she missed it, and she couldn’t understand why.

Alaina was once against reliving memories of her old life as she walked through the ending human containment unit, checking if all the machines were grinding gears properly. She had to do this quite often during her stay on the ship, even at odd hours of the moonlit hours. The engine could easily malfunction, after all, and she didn’t want to think of what could happen if it shut down altogether.

As she was checking reading on one of their mechanisms, Rom’s voice came over the intercom, giving her a mini heart attack. Sure, he would call down often to see if everything was going well, but his voice coming out of nowhere would never cease to frighten her.

“It’s pacing the race fine,” she replied, once again returning over to the engine. “Some of our readings are a bit off, but I’ll be sure to keep on peeper on them.”

Once Rom went quiet, the human containment unit went into a dense silence that Alaina was starting to despise. She had been cooped up here all day with no one speak to, and despite what she tried to tell herself, she longed for human interaction. So, after she checked the rest of the machines, she headed to the cockpit and leaned against the wobbly flip-shutter frame.

“Talking to the AI again, Rom?” A small smile crossed her face. “Why am I not surprised?”

Alaina was competent, and that made Romulus's life a lot easier. When she said readings were a bit off, he had just beeped an acknowledgment over the coms and trusted her to handle it. She didn't seem worried, so he wasn't.

He turned with a wry smile on his face when she came up behind him. "Hey, listen, Heph is a person too. You should talk to him more." The AI had access to everywhere on the ship, and Romulus was in the habit of talking to him often, but the others still liked to tease him about it. Not his fault Hephaestus-11 was a good conversationalist.
The AI piped up from his spot on the console. "I'm happy to talk to all of you, Alaina, it's just that Romulus asks often."
The HUD (heads-up-display) in Romulus's visor pinged another alert, and Heph looked distracted. "Switching control to you, Captain." The formal address was to remind Romulus he had a ship to fly just now. He downed the throttle, sliding them smoothly out of warp space. The graviteum engine didn't blow, so that was good.
Now it was just a matter of flying them into the solar system and to the particular planet. Usually he flew the Olympus with just the helmet HUD, but a glance at Alaina helped him decide.
"Onscreen."
The viewscreen at the front of the cockpit blinked to life, showing the view around them. A massive star, tinted blue, coming up in front of them, ringed by three planets. One was a huge brown and green gas giant that made Jupiter look like a dribbling soccer. One was a smaller pink and blue planet, that Heph said was made up of a surface covering of ice over gasses and liquids, but not water.

And one was their target. The smallest planet had huge sections of red across it's surface, but it was far enough away from the star that it was the right temperature. Almost.
The constellations out here were different, and Rom found his breath taken away just a little.
"bonita, isn't it?" he said quietly.