Six hundred years ago The Enemy landed on Earth. They gave no name for themselves and made no demands, but we called them demon, alien, dragon, or simply The Enemy. Such a powerful threat unified humanity for the first time in its history in a war that lasted more than one and a half centuries. Whole generations lived and died under the shadow of war, and the earth was torn apart as humanity cut deep into the planet, scrambling for resources and using every measure available to fight The Enemy’s war machines and the monsters that they used in their hostile ecological takeover of Earth. We covered our retreats with nuclear fire, and supplemented our woefully inadequate birth rate with billions of humans grown in artificial wombs. Ultimately, nothing we could do was enough, and the war ground to a bloody halt.
Ninety years into the war, humanity finally found the weapon it needed to break the bloody stalemate that the war had become. For years humanity grappled with the difficulties of AI in an effort to further boost their numbers and reduce the war’s staggering human cost. The theorists pinned the blame on many factors, but ultimately the research never panned out, and that was that. Hope for a solution was all but abandoned until a team of scientists managed to scan a human brain accurately enough to digitize it. Backed by massive processing power and giant autofactory complexes, these new robotic generals turned the war around in our favor. It took decades more fighting, and the people born on the eve of the war were decades dead, but we finally saw the day The Enemy turned tail and fled Earth, abandoning many of their soldiers on an increasingly hostile world.
We underestimated how dangerous a foe backed into a corner with no hope for escape could be. Of all people we should have known better. The remnants of The Enemy’s invasion force had their revenge. Somehow they managed to turn many our greatest defenders against us. The safeties we had installed in case of such an event failed spectacularly. In a last ditch effort the handful of loyalist AI cores decided that the only way to survive to continue the fight was by disconnecting themselves from the world, jamming every long range radio frequency, and shooting down anything that flew too high despite the fact that the manufacturing restrictions and behavior-blocks we placed on them remained in place. Suddenly humanity’s last strongholds lost contact with the outside world, leaving the soldiers on the surface cut off from their homes and fighting against former allies. It was only until much later that those of us who survived returned to our cities to find smoking fissures and craters where they once stood. The Enemy had their revenge.
What little humanity remained tried to rebuild, but we did not have the expertise the hypnotically trained technicians and scientists in the cities die. We were all soldiers and officers—mostly vat-born—trained to fight since we were young. The intricacies of technology were as lost on us as they were to the scattered remnants of our artificial allies so we improvised and reverse engineered what we could, forging new states.
Gradually, memories faded, and new cultures sprung up. Again, we became our own worst enemies despite the harsh world that lay outside our walled strongholds. It has been centuries since the darkest days of the war, where our survival was in doubt, but the world is still a hard place where we must fight to survive.
What this Game is
This is a BESM 3e game that is primarily focused on writing and role-playing, even in combat (though there will certainly be combat). Characters will be playing mech pilots in the service of the State of Xia, but you should expect to spend a great deal of time outside of combat interacting with the world and each other (so you should be comfortable developing your character outside of combat). There will be many personal subplots depending on your own character’s backgrounds and the minor NPCs you provide as well as larger issues you can get involved in (or not). This game has many post apocalyptic elements, but you still live in a fairly well developed nation state.
Exceptional roleplaying or acting in character when it seriously inconveniences your character will be rewarded with character points, but as always, this is a group game, so even if it is in entirely character to constantly object to another PC finding alternatives that don’t complicate the game will be rewarded.
Character Creation:
-Character sheets only need to be finished after you are accepted into the game
-All characters will be built with 150 points excluding the cost of your mech
-No more than one atribute at 5.
-Skills will be based on the higher of either Post Apocalyptic and Mecha
-You can select one mech frame and as many customizations as you can afford (the number of CP allotted is listed with the mecha). You do not keep leftover CP.
-Characters should have a culturally appropriate (Chinese) name. I can provide resources if you need them.
-Characters must provide a one sentence summary of character concept, short but well written description, personality, and personal histories, and two RP samples one out of combat and one in combat (these don’t have to be long, but they have to showcase your writing ability)
-You must also list 3-5 NPCs (friends or enemies) that your character has a meaningful relationship with. A few sentences each will do, but since these are your plot hooks, it is in your interest to make up NPCs you want to interact with.
The Demon Company
