forum The Dark of Space

Started March 14, 2023 by @EldritchHorror-Davadio health_and_safety emoji_events

tune

The year 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 room for about 3 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 3 crewmembers onboard the Olympus.

Captain, Security, Survivalist- @Davadio
Engineer, Technology Specialist, Geologist- @Emmrii
Medic, Biologist, Cartographer- @JustALostM

Character template:

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

Name: Romulus Vespasian
Age: 25
Gender: Male
Appearance: Rom is 6'6"/2m tall 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 eyes are an icy blue, and his left one has a large scar running diagonally across it down to his cheek, making him blind in that eye. He has a square jaw and a Roman nose, and was considered handsome at one point, before multiple breaks to his facial bones 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 boots. 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 eyes, which he leaves visible. There is a black glass visor that covers his eyes 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 eyes. He has a voice modulator that makes his voice gravelly and deep, more of a rumble. His boots are actually greaves that extend up to his knee 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 working 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 food. 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: Tristan Moon
Age: 24
Gender: Male
Appearance: Tristan stands at 5’11 and is 185lb. Moon has Heterochromia making him have blue in the left eye and hazel in the right. He has curly, dirty blond hair which complements his different colored eyes. Moon 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: Moon likes to crack a good joke here and there. In reality he's a very quite person except when it comes to his crew. They're like family, and at this point in time, the only one he has. Though he likes to joke around a little, when something needs to be taken seriously, he takes it seriously.
Backstory (optional): Moon 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 3. He was taken in by a poor family. When Moon got old enough, He would travel around the populated earth, searching for something he could occupy himself with. He decided to go to all the different libraries 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 Moon. Thats when he heard of Project Elbowspace.
(Dont want this to die before it starts-)

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 eyes. 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/Geologist
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 books, and she’s somewhat of a romantic person.

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 3 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 gravity plating, allowing the entire interior of the sphere to be usable space. 3 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/meeting room completed the ship.
The 3 man crews trained in their ship for a year 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 year 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 bad, 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 year, 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 an hour. 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, 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 room. "Alaina, it's Rom. Engine running fine? We're coming into a big gravity 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 child, 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 engine room, checking if all the machines were working properly. She had to do this quite often during her stay on the ship, even at odd hours of the night. The engine could easily malfunction, after all, and she didn’t want to think of what could happen if it shut down altogether.

She paused as she listened to her Captain’s voice come over the intercom, asking if the engine was running well. For now, it was, but machines like this could be unpredictable.

“Yeah, it’s running fine.” Alaina sighed, pushing her hair back with her hand. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”

Alaina turned on the alert system in the engine room so that it would notify her if anything went wrong. She figured that everything would run smoothly for a while, but it was better to be safe than sorry. After she finished up, she headed up to the cockpit and stood in the doorway.

She smiled faintly at Romulus, raising her eyebrow. “Talking to the AI again?”

Alaina was competent, and that made Romulus's life a lot easier. When she said things were fine, he had just beeped an acknowledgment over the coms. 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 basketball. 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.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" he said quietly, before thumbing the coms. "Tristan, you getting this?"

Alaina stole a glance over at Rom, wondering what was on his mind. There was so much going on on the ship and barely anytime to rest and relax anymore. That, along with the intense loneliness that came and left, was beginning to weigh on the shoulders of everyone on the ship. Alaina figured it especially was this way with the young captain. He was barely a few years older than her, but he had loads of more responsibility.

“Mm, he asks often? Go figure.” Alaina smirked faintly at Rom. “You know, if you’re ever lonely, you can come talk to me. I’m probably just as good of a listener as Heph is.”

Alaina walked over to Rom’s side and sat down, her eyes focused on the expanse stretched out before them. It was strange to her how fast her desires could change. For hours, she had been thinking only about home and how much she missed her father and her siblings. But, as soon as she saw the beautiful sight of the universe again, she wanted to stay on this ship for as long as possible.

“It’s all just so… massive.” She laughed softly and rested her cheek against her knuckles. “Makes you feel kinda small, huh?”

She listened as Romulus called over the coms to Tristan. How was he doing? She hadn’t seen him in hours.

Tistan was used to his new life on the ship. Day in and day out, make sure there wasn't any life on the planets they passed by. Or maybe It was needed for there to be life. What ever it was, Tristan was doing it. He had been on the ship for six months on the ship and luckily everything was decently well on the ship. The constant beep of the radar was an annoying sound to say the least, but he never seemed to notice it much. He was always occupied with running tests and such.
When the com's went off, Tristan pressed the button to answer but his mind instantly blanked out. All that could be heard from the side of Rom was the beeping and nothing else. Tristan shook his head, not knowing why he spaced out. "Everything looking alright on my side Rom. Nothing to interesting a always. Though I will be on the look out if the radar'll catch anything. Hopefully we'll have something soon." He yawned.
Tristan rarely came out of his laboratory due to the fact that if there was ever a sign of life, the crew would need do hear about it as soon as possible. Mostly when they had reached the destination he loved to explore.

Romulus chuckled. "I do ask a lot, because Hephaestus can't get tired of me." The AI gave a low beep just then, similar to a rude gesture, and Romulus smirked.
He glanced over at Alaina. "I do appreciate it though. And you're human, which makes you immediately a better listener."
When they'd all first met, Romulus had intimidated everyone with relative ease. He was taller, stronger, more muscular, louder, and he'd walked into their first meeting in full armor with his voice modulator on. It hadn't occurred to him to tone it down.
They had both warmed up to him eventually, but he was keenly aware of how much space he took up, physically and mentally. He was extremely friendly, and in the interest of not driving the rest of the crew crazy with his pestering, he often went to the AI.
Alaina sat down, and Rom glanced at her again. The look of wonder on her face highlighted how pretty she was, and he had to remind himself to focus.
He chuckled again at her question. "Yes, it does make me feel small, and not much does that."
They cleared the minor asteroid belt at the edge of every solar system, and Romulus chuckled to himself as the report came in. Tristan tended to bury himself in his work, and he was very good at his jobs.
He also tended to hide till it was time to actually get on-planet. Not an issue, he wasn't anti-social or anything, but it was part of the reason Rom talked to Heph so often.

In system, they couldn't move at light speed safely. Too much danger of overshooting and either warping through a planet, or accidentally throwing themselves into the star. Which meant that it would be another 8 hours, moving at about half the speed of light, before they were in orbit over the planet and were able to land and check it out. These 8 hours were critical, because if at any point they caught signs that something was wrong, Romulus would need to be the one to make the call, turn them around, and get them out of there.
"8 hours, guys. We'll be in orbit over the target planet in 8 hours. Sleep in shifts and forward your diagnostics to me when you rest. Tristan, if I could get the updated star-charts from you soon, I'd appreciate it." As cartographer, Tristan was the one Romulus relied on to keep their position marked at all times. He knew generally where they were, but Tristan was the one who could whip out a map, or pull up a star chart, and point to exactly where they were on it.