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Futuristic [LORE] Aegis: Error 508

Aegis 508
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What is this roleplay?

Aegis: Error 508 is a near-futuristic superhero story that takes place in the year 2045, in Baltimore, Maryland. It follows a group of professional superheroes and Commonwealth agents tasked with investigating and cleaning up the estate of the recently deceased mad scientist Dr. Demeter Green.

Inspirations for this setting include, but are not limited to:
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe
  • DC Animated Universe
  • Venture Brothers
  • Zettai Karen Children
  • The Unlimited Hyoubu Kyousuke
  • My Hero Academia
  • One-Punch Man
  • Heroman
  • Tiger & Bunny

 
Last edited:
Roleplay Rules


Roleplay Rules

Game Master Rights
As owner and primary game master of this roleplay, I have the right to do what it takes to make this a pleasant game for all involved. Sometimes, this involves removing players for the following reasons:
  • Starting political bullshit in the OOC.
  • Mocking other players.
  • Refusing to read posts or follow established power/setting conventions.
  • Taking the game too seriously.
How to be Nice to Other Players

Because sometimes it has to be said out loud, and that's okay. We should all be on the same page.
  • Tell me if you're upset with me or another player. I cannot read minds.
  • No meta-gaming: It's not fair to use out-of-character knowledge to get an edge against another player in-story, and you're probably taking things too seriously.
  • No auto-hitting: Do not assume that your strike against another character lands. Check with the other player before you post.
  • No power-playing: Is your character always the most powerful or coolest person in the room? You better hope there are some reasonably exploitable flaws in your profile, otherwise you might be a not-nice player.
  • Be a good sport about losing. It's good for character development, and no one is perfect.
  • Send pictures of your pets.
Joining the Roleplay

If you'd like to join Aegis, the process is very straightforward. Send me a private message titled "Aegis Application" and ask to join.

Leaving the Roleplay

If you'd like to leave Aegis, the process is also very straightforward. Send me a private message and let me know that you're dropping out.

Life happens, sometimes we lose interest, or maybe you like the story but not the people. You don't have to explain why, I just need need to know what to do with your character after you leave.

Activity

It would be nice if everyone posted once or twice a week. That might not happen. Sometimes we might post once a day, and sometimes it's not our turn for a month.

However, if it's been more than a month since you've posted AND I haven't heard from you or seen you active on the site, then I will be forced to assume that a supervillain got to you and will drop you from the roster.

Writing Level

I like short posts. Everyone else likes long posts. If you write 300 words, I'm pleased. If you write 3,000 words, everyone else will read your complex backstory with bated breath while I cry in the corner. It is what it is.

Just run your shit through Grammarly or something and we'll be good.

 


Becoming a Professional Hero

In accordance with the Super Identification and Limiter Protocol Act of 2019, any American citizen known or discovered to have the A6G23 gene, or “super” gene, must be tested for the possibility of possessing transhuman abilities (henceforth called “superpowers”).

Should the subject test positive for superpowers, they must immediately report to their nearest Commonwealth office to be ranked - a process in which the subject must display their superhuman abilities to their fullest capabilities, and are then assigned a rank based on the scope and scale of said abilities. The individual must then attend federally mandated training for controlling their powers. If their powers are deemed dangerous to the public, additional safety measures may be taken. These measures may include location tracking, regular surveillance, armed bodyguards, solitary confinement, involuntary stasis, execution, or any combination thereof.

These laws ensure that supers can safely interact with normal society on a daily basis. All citizens with powers are strongly advised to attend this training even if their powers are not considered destructive or dangerous.

Once an individual’s status as a super is made official, all government documents such as passports, and licenses will be updated with their rank. This can be found as a black circle containing one of the following letters: D, C, B, A, or S. They will be assigned a limiter, an electronic device that dampens the expression of one’s superpower to an effective D rank.

A subject is no longer required to wear a limiter if certain conditions are met:
  • The subject is over the age of eighteen (18), and
  • They have attended and received a certificate of completion from a government-authorized superpower training program
  • The limiter has been worn for a full calendar year, and
  • No high-strain incidents have been recorded during this period, which indicates sufficient control of powers over a long period of time.
  • The subject is not S Rank. S Ranks are the most powerful and dangerous of supers, and therefore cannot be left unsupervised.
Commonwealth also offers supers a unique opportunity: the “Blue Card”. First established in 1996, the Blue Card is the mark of a federally approved vigilante. Should a super choose to apply, they must complete a series of physical and psychological examinations, and other relevant training procedures.

If approved, the applicant will be issued a Blue Card that indicates their vigilante status. This allows them to assist law enforcement, make arrests, and gives them the legal responsibility of reporting to an emergency scene, state laws and local ordinances permitting. The Blue Card may be revoked if the holder fails to show up for mandatory retraining or is found guilty of criminal activity.
 


The Ranking System

Superheroes are rated by Commonwealth on a five-by-five scale. This system combines the potential destructive scale of power with potential area of effect to best estimate the size of the response needed in case of an incident.

Out of character, instead of quantifying abilities with stats such as strength or dexterity, this Mercalli-inspired scale is intended to help players visualize the intensity of each character's power set and the potential impact they can have on the world at large.

If you try to use this as a combat system I will send rotten fish to your router.

DCBAS
1D1C1B1A1S1
2D2C2B2A2S2
3D3C3B3A3S3
4D4C4B4A4S4
5D5C5B5A5S5

Letter indicates potential destructive scale of power, ranging from D-ranks who are certainly more powerful than normal humans but not particularly harmful or threatening to society, to S rank supers who are under constant surveillance and treated with the care and consideration of a nuclear bomb.

Note: It's late and my head hurts. Go read the TvTropes pages on Super Weight. D is approximately Iron Weight (1) and S is a high 4. I'll write you ll better descriptions later.
  • Rank D:
  • Rank C:
  • Rank B:
  • Rank A:
  • Rank S:
Number illustrates how many people are affected by the power, in a roughly logarithmic fashion.
  • Level 1: Less than a dozen people would be affected by the use of this person's superpower.
  • Level 2: About a hundred people would be affected.
  • Level 3: A thousand people (an entire village, for example).
  • Level 4: Ten thousand people (large town or small city)
  • Level 5: A hundred thousand people (medium city on up).

 


History of the World (Abridged)

The year is 2045, and this is the United States of America.

Humans with unusual abilities have existed since the dawn of time, at least, as far as we know. Witches and warlocks, prophets and shamans, gods and legends - these figures we understand to be myths were likely what we would now consider to be superhumans.

Approximately one tenth of the entire human population carries a gene that, if expressed properly, could allow that person to develop powers. Even before Gregor Mendel, this phenomenon had been studied for centuries throughout the world by those wishing to understand the nature of these powers and the deeper mysteries of the universe – and by those who saw great potential for magnificent profits and power.

In the twentieth century, there were massive movements for equal rights for all sorts of minorities – a smaller one, though no less important to the people it involved, was for the rights of supers. As you might have expected, they had their own issues.

They wanted society to be aware that yes, they were people with extraordinary abilities, but they were people all the same: people that weren’t obligated to use their powers in any particular way, people who sometimes needed extra accommodations even though they weren’t disabled, people who were often falsely accused of things because of their powers, people who wanted to be treated like normal people despite their extraordinary abilities.

The Rise and Fall of Commonwealth

The push for super’s rights led to the creation of a federal government agency called Commonwealth in the 1980s. Their mission was simple and well-intentioned – register all supers within the United States, stay in contact with them, and help them keep their powers under control.

In the mid-90s, Commonwealth created the Blue Card system as a workaround against illegal vigilantism. Adult supers were invited to sign up and participate in this “legal vigilantism” program. They could register under an alias and be granted special citizen’s arrest privileges if they vowed to work for Commonwealth under an extended contract.

With this policy, Commonwealth slowly morphed into a law enforcement agency for super-related crime, and throughout the next thirty years, it became of a jack-of-all trades division – legislators saw it far easier to just assign anything remotely super-related to Commonwealth, since they already had the knowledge and the experience to deal with such things. It wasn’t a bad arrangement – many supers considered Commonwealth a safe ally, with steady employment for those with powers, which kept them from working in traditional environments.

After the Great Recession of 2008, Commonwealth’s budget shrank as more money went to overseas military operations. The then-director, codenamed Librarian, deemed it necessary to bring in money himself. He authorized medical and genetic research within Commonwealth’s own walls, negotiated with other research labs around the country, and commercialized the sanctioned vigilantes by setting up dues and license fees.

The new policies increased income for the agency and its operations, but also became widely regarded as the beginning of the end of Commonwealth. In 2015, there was a schism within the agency. Many internal investigations were conducted, several people were fired, and the co-director, codenamed Red, left Commonwealth. He disappeared completely not long after, along with many other former agents.

In addition to this fiasco, previously classified documents were anonymously released to the world, and they revealed that the Librarian had been pushing for massive research and ethically dubious genetic experiments. Much of the information was redacted and blacked out, but the horrific details were still there – pipe dreams that flew in the face of ethics, with phrases such as: “artificial supers”, “parasitic symbiosis with enigma energy”, “reversal of entropy”, “extraterrestrial colonization”, and, perhaps worst of all in the eyes of Americans, was “exclusive, scientific trade deals with Russia”.

The Rapture Incident

In 2018, while Commonwealth was wading through the toxic dump of their own dirty laundry, a domestic terrorist group attacked their headquarters in the nation’s capital. Bleeding money, resources, trust, and literal blood, Commonwealth was pathetically unable to defend themselves from the bombing and subsequent raid by Rapture, a terrorist organisation. The only thing they could boast was a surprisingly low body count given that a hospital was next door, and that the only damage was, well, a lot of collateral damage, and several key files from their laboratories.

Nonetheless, the threat of a war was just enough for Commonwealth to cling to life, as Rapture continued to undo them at every turn, right down to subduing and capturing one of their own illegal experiments, which had run amok in the heart of DC. The defeat was systemic, calculated, and ruthless – and when Rapture finally broke into the secret laboratories in the bunker below the Commonwealth headquarters, it was the final nail in a twisted, broken coffin. Specifically, the Librarian’s coffin. His body was never found, though his carbon shadow remains if you know where to look.

Victorious, Rapture disappeared into the night, becoming one of the greatest mysteries of the modern world, seen as an anti-establishment, anti-corruption band of paramilitary heroes.

Unless you were the establishment, in which case they were ruthless, bloodthirsty terrorists, who desecrated American values of justice, peaceful transitions of power, and nearly unraveled the country for something that could have been solved much more efficiently if it were brought before, say, actual law enforcement officials.

But really, who cares what pigs think?

A Second Chance

After the defeat of Commonwealth, the remains of the agency were purged. There was precisely one reason, and one reason only that Commonwealth wasn’t completely dissolved: Congress passed a bill called SILPA, or the “Super Identification and Limiter Protocol Act”. Commonwealth was the only agency with an even remotely comprehensive understanding of how many supers there were in the country, how their powers worked, and how to locate them.

For almost a decade, Commonwealth acted as a skeleton agency, a puppet of Congress as SILPA rolled out and almost all supers were made to wear limiters that would artificially dampen their powers in public spaces. Additionally, as part of the bill, supers were made to take part in federally mandated training courses to prove that they would not be a danger to other civilians. Several private contractors were hired to help meet this goal, setting up training courses in private facilities and issuing certificates of safety and Blue Cards on behalf of Commonwealth.

Congress eventually (reluctantly) relinquished control of the Commonwealth agency. They chose a hardened federal cop to lead it, a bull-headed and stone-faced woman named Scarlet Chernov. The powers of the Commonwealth director are laughable now, but it continues to be the only agency that’s even remotely capable of deploying a semi-competent team to neutralize a rogue super. And, as always, the Blue Card system continues lumbering on, allowing supers to try to prove that they aren’t dangerous weapons of mass destruction after all.

Last Time, on Aegis

Advancements in technology, frequently led by hyper-intelligent supers, has led to a modern American society in which cybernetics are feasible, albeit expensive, solutions for prosthetic limbs. The once-underground transhuman movement has become quite popular, with many “normies” feeling that elective cybernetic enhancements are the only way to level the playing field between normal human beings, and supers. The fields of robotics and artificial intelligence have made leaps and bounds, with multiple universities and corporations putting forth experimental androids for testing.

After twenty years of SILPA, the super registration system is working well. The name “Commonwealth” still leaves a bad taste in many people’s mouths, but the current administration is keen on turning over a new leaf by way of an aggressive public outreach program. This would highlight how safe and sane medical studies featuring super-powered volunteers contribute to scientific progressive across multiple fields of study. They also show how supers are unique individuals with unique abilities that help make society a brighter place. The Director personally finds the ad campaign to be vomit-inducing, and much prefers her latest pet project of quietly tracking former Rapture rebels.

Of great concern to the super community, however, is a rising trend in anti-super sentiment, which is possibly inspired by Commonwealth’s historic unpopularity. The face of this trend seems to be a wanna-be domestic terrorist group called the Knights of Raguel. Unlike Rapture, however, they indiscriminately target any supers. They lead occasionally-successful social media brigades, howling about the status quo and proper society being destroyed by supers. No one took them seriously until the Knights drew first blood at Owens Mill Mall.

[somebody remind Welian to update this bit with the ending of the last RP]

On Today's Episode of Aegis

Commonwealth has received news that a former employee, Dr. Demeter Green, has (finally) passed away, holed up in the private island outside the jurisdiction of the United States that she escaped to after she faked her death (the first time) during the Rapture incident.

It is your job, as respected and valued agents of this fine federal organization, to go to her island and confirm her death. She's known to have stolen many files on her way out, so bring back as much as you can carry. Whatever you cannot carry, destroy. Glass the island, if you must. And whatever you see, tell no one.

We're already dealing with one mole within Commonwealth.

Do not make it two.

 


History of the World (Timeline)

21th century (2001 - 2100)
  • 2040s
    • 2045: The current year of the roleplay.
    • 2040: An internet cult calling themselves The Knights of Raguel capitalize on anti-super sentiment and begin a series of armed protests that quickly turn violent.
  • 2030s
    • 203X: Scarlet "Gorgon" Chernov is appointed Director of Commonwealth
    • 203XThe Chipmunk King rises to power, is then apprehended and put in prison.
  • 2020s
    • 2026: Aegis is founded.
    • 2025: Eastern Europe is conquered by a supervillain
  • 2010s
    • 2019: SILPA is passed
    • 2018: Rapture attacks Commonwealth
    • 2015: Hunter "Red" Ward departs Commonwealth on extremely poor terms with then-Director "Librarian".
  • 2000s
    • 2008: The Great Recessions leads to Librarian seeking alternative income streams
20th century (1901 - 2000)
  • 1990s
    • 1996: Blue Card system created
  • 1980s
    • 198X: Commonwealth founded
  • 1970s
    • 197X: Super rights movement picks up, riding the wake of prior Civil Rights movements
  • 1960s
    • 196X: A Russian scientist gets up to some shit with genetics in Russia.
  • 1940s:
    • WW2: This is about where we see supers begin to be forcibly conscripted on a large scale.
19th century (1801 - 1900)
  • Yo, if anyone wants to do a Victorian-era side story, or something set in the Wild West, let me know...
 


Genetic Modulation of ‘Enhanced’ [a6g23] Beings

Abstract

In the development of life on Earth, the processes of Evolution and Natural selection are constantly acting upon organisms. Through reproductive success, organisms with advantageous traits are able to continue their lineage, thereby continuing the longevity of the traits which helped it survive. As with any trait, this is certainly true of the observable phenomena of enhanced “super” humans, and their development in Earth’s history. Considering factors of this evolved trait, gene flow, and genetic drift it is plausible to map the extent of this trait within the human population - and furthermore suggest the post-zygotic (after developmental) altering of these genes to express a desired effect.

Introduction to the Super Gene & Hox Manipulation

Through prior sampling data, a comprehensive genome of the traits associated with ‘enhanced’ individuals have been found to be recessive, exhibiting no signs of co-dominance (Singh, 2000). As shown in figure 1, three alleles govern this trait -- however only by a homozygous pairing of the recessive p2 can an enhanced individual be produced. This trend results in a 4:4:1 ratio; four individuals with no trace of the “super” gene, four carriers in which an allele of the gene is present but not expressed, and finally one homozygous ‘enhanced’ being. (Orem, Sloan, 2014).

1664656109081.png

The expression of the trait in question [TAC-TTA-GAA-ATC-GTC-AAG-TGG-CAT (at location a6g23)] (J. Lacy, 2016) can only result in an enhanced being given the genotype is homozygous. The development of the trait itself is regulated by the Hox gene, which regulates the expression of genes and in turn the development of phenotypic traits. When injected with a DNA polymerase enzyme tailored to trait [a6g23], it is possible to re-express a single allele type with another compatible code (this process however can lead exaggerated effects on other traits governed by the gene upon unregulated re-activation of the hox gene) (E. Ville, 2004).

By this, it is possible to alter a carrier individual (genotypes Pp2, pp2, p2P, p2p) by selecting the non-enhanced expressing allele and replacing it to make a new homozygous recessive enhanced being.

As any new ‘enhanced’ being is only that by genotype, as the new trait will not be expressed until stimulation of the hox gene. This is mandated by an endocrine response from the body’s internal clock and external information. It is possible to stimulate this by way of injecting an engineered hormonal fluid into the subject bloodstream, thereby simulating the appropriate internal environment for the hox gene’s stimulation, and the development of the enhanced trait [a6g23] (J. Lacy, 2016)

Method of Serum Expression

Using rabbits as test beds 20mg of serum was injected at regular intervals. The [REDACTED] Tethered to the cage to prevent further injury [REDACTED] To keep cardiovascular failure chances low [REDACTED]

[REDACTED] Brain stem exposed [REDACTED] Neurotoxic shock therapy. [REDACTED] Blood replacement [REDACTED]

[REDACTED]

[REDACTED]

Human Trials

[REDACTED] Steady drip of chemical cocktail prepared beforehand [REDACTED]

[REDACTED] Readily metabolized variant [REDACTED] lots of gross blood n stuff ew.

Results

We’ll get back to you on that one.

 
Commonwealth (to be stylized later)

Flow-chart.png
 

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