Chrome Symphony [OOC]

Name: Renk

Nickname: Stranglehold

Age: 45

Height: 6'2"

Weight: 180 lbs.

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Black

Gender: Male

Species: Esper

Psychic Powers: Can weakly manipulate time. Renk can stop time for short periods (a few seconds) allowing him to "teleport" short distances undetected. His physical abilities are about average.

Appearance: Somewhat athletic. He wears military combat attire.

Personality: A little aggressive and impatient. Renk has a short fuse when he thinks people are mocking him. He doesn't like to wait and can't stand impunctuality.

History: Renk is a military esper and remote viewer. He's seen combat but mostly during covert ops. Renk is considered one of a small number of specialized agents that can infiltrate places where no one can, thanks to his ability to move past security cameras and detectors while freezing time. His family was killed in an attack by a faction of planet-bound renegades and has a deep hatred toward those who violate the laws governing space travel as a result.

Seems like we've got a pretty diverse group so far. I'll toss up some comments and questions for each of them, so we can get some discussion going.

In general, I'm not quite sure where to start with this. Would anyone's characters know each other, or are they all strangers? Are the two military types current or former military? And for that matter, what sort of military? Government or Corporate? Was there a war of some sort recently?

I also totally forgot to have a "Theme Music" entry in the sample sheet, so feel free to shove some music in there for something that would play when your character takes the stage somehow.

Duncan

Given his age, I can think of a few other things people might call him.

Adepts and similar are intended to be primarily a recent thing, so most characters who have such abilities should be fairly young. That isn't to say that it's only people born within the last 20 years, though. Someone like Duncan would be particularly interesting to any corps who are researching the phenomenon.

Is he up to anything in particular, job-wise, when things begin? Or is that left open enough for us to figure out whatever is most convenient?

Atlas

Whatever this major incident was, if you want to discuss it privately (or publicly, for that matter), I can probably have NPCs and others actually reference it in one way or another.

I'm fine with him otherwise being a relative cypher of a character, but some idea of where he is as the story starts, or what he's doing would be useful.

Shell

It probably would be possible, one way or another, to replace most of her lost tissues with cloned parts instead of cybernetics, but I'm not going to gainsay it, either.

If you'd like to actually create the corporation you work for, you can. Otherwise, I have one that will probably work well enough. Similarly, if there are any particular things that would make her question her loyalty, as it's pretty obvious some such event must happen, it might be worth mentioning them for planning purposes. I won't get in the way if you have something specific in mind, though.

Renk

How'd he get the nickname of "stranglehold"? There's got to be some sort of story behind that one.

Time control is a pretty dangerous power, so I'm a bit leery of it. It's certainly the sort of thing that can be leveraged in ways that make it really strong, or can remove tension from a scene.

The general military questions above apply to him as well as to Atlas. Has he done any notorious ops that might make the news, even if he didn't? Has he gone freelance? Just about anyone could use someone with that sort of infiltration talent.

I have a couple ideas for a character of my own to toss in, or at least a few major NPCs. I'm not sure what to do there, though, or where to start things off.

Atlas had to carry out his orders when a massive, unregistered, unsanctioned mass emigration to space began on the planet. The government / corporations stepped in to prevent this migration and the first step was to implant ID chips in all people on the planet so that their movements could be tracked. This happened around 10 years ago (unless your idea for a timeline conflicts with that).

Of course there was a mass uprising when all people were required to register and be chipped so the powers-that-were at the time then had to take the most belligerent dissidents and put them into prison camps until they could be properly managed. Atlas was a part of this round-up and, during some violent confrontations, he had to kill a lot of people.

What really bothers Atlas, however, was the massacre that happened at a space port when a large number of escapees tried to board a cargo shuttle. There was an accident when Atlas fired at a dissident who was throwing a molotov cocktail at him. His gun hit a nearby fuel tank and, long story short, around 80 escapees burned to death inside the shuttle along with some of Atlas's comrades.

Renk's time control power is limited to just a few seconds at a time. It also takes a lot of concentration to do it so under pressure he can't always make it work.

Renk's military background is similar to Atlas, from the sound of it. He was also involved in rounding people up but he didn't have a hand in anything that actually got people killed. Renk's focus was almost totally on making covert things happen and he never made the news nor did his accomplishments.

There might be many more ways that can prevent Renk from using his power. I was thinking maybe strong gravity distortion could trip him up and that might be his overall weakness, too.

I don't have anything specific in mind but the idea was that whatever corporation is dominant (and had much to do with whatever Atlas and Renk were involved with) would work. You can flesh out that corporation some more.

As for the cloning, maybe there's some rare biological condition Shell has where the cloned parts wouldn't assimilate right - or something to that effect.