Might be going to Hell again. Not sure.
Feb. 24th, 2009 05:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynWas up until 3 last night working remotely on servers at the office. Got jarred awake at 7:20 AM by boss having trouble connecting to freshly fixed-up servers & could not get back to sleep after fixing issue. Could not pull brains together enough for RP. However, the following prompt was given in the OOC community, courtesy of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
innerbrat:
Write a short-as-you please AU backstory for one of your characters transposed into a completely different canon universe. Would he be Browncoat or Alliance? Would she be a Slayer or one of the Scoobies? How would your character's powers help him find a niche in the Justice League? How would your Sparklepire retain their essential Sparkleness if they grew up in Uberwald?
And I managedthree four of those.
Born on the largely unremarkable human colony of Ballard in 2511, Gordon Freeman was largely overlooked by most of the local authorities as a young child. Most, but not all, as most six-year-olds don't generally have the capacity to disassemble discarded military-grade weaponry and reassemble it to the point of full functionality. The United Nations Space Command representatives who heard about the feat made some recommendations, and the boy was kidnapped at the age of six and replaced by a flash-clone; his parents never noticed, save that they thought Gordon seemed more talkative than they remembered. Little did they suspect that their younger son was instead being trained like mad, and later physically altered, along with a rapidly dwindling group of children of similar age and potential on the human military capital of Reach. Out of the original class of 150 children, thirty died from the training and side effects of the alterations, twelve were crippled or otherwise rendered unable to ever fight again, and thirty-three ultimately made it all the way through the SPARTAN-II program.
Sometimes Gordon-108 wonders what it would've been like if Dr. Halsey's program had never found him. He's pretty sure he would've liked to go into engineering, or maybe even pure science. But that wouldn't have stopped the Covenant, or the Flood, now, would it.
War, war never changes. It was the inevitable result of the path humanity had chosen. Everyone who entered into the conflict expected victory. Everyone was optimistic. But as the hostilities escalated, optimism faded and society began to collapse.
The great Vaults were built to house the wealthy, the powerful, the influential and those deemed necessary to their survival. They stockpiled their goods and locked the great steel doors behind them, leaving the rest of the world to burn in the inevitable atomic fire.
But not everything burned.
By the year 2077 the coal veins that had once been the backbone of industry and power across the eastern United States were completely tapped out, leaving nothing behind them but hollowed-out mountains. There was no space in the Vaults for the people of coal country, but they knew the land they lived on, and they knew the mines below it. When the storm of world war threatened to break in earnest they took to the tunnels to wait it out, and when the ashes finally settled on the skin of the former world, they crept out to see what awaited them. It was nothing like any world they or their ancestors had ever known, but it was all the world they had. And this time, they would not let it be taken from them.
Your family's ancestors were among the first to take to the mines, and the first to show their faces in the light that dawned on the first of the mountain folk to retake the surface. For generations, your family has been among the guardians and watchmen of the slowly growing surface village nestled in the shadow of the mountains. As the good shepherd will lay down his life for his flock, so have they for their people- and nobody expects you to be an exception.
Your name is Adrian. This is life in New Rowlesburg. And life in New Rowlesburg is about to change.
"The Machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only through the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the Machine!"
The Iron Hands chapter of the Space Marines of the Imperium of Man has a reputation for being relatively straightforward and incredibly harsh. And that's by Space Marine standards; by normal human standards they're bloody insane when it comes to survival and standards. Infamous for their extensive use of bionics (rather than being content to rely on massive gengineering, surgery, and external technology), the Iron Hands also eschew the traditional office of Chaplain in favor of their Iron Fathers, specially trained Techmarines who serve to protect the faith of their brethren. One such Iron Father, Dion, is one of the oldest and hardest Space Marines alive; his goal and ambition is to one day serve the God-Emperor of Man in eternal service in the immortal body of a Dreadnought war machine- a large, walking tank which carries both powerful guns and lethal close combat weaponry, armoured to withstand all but the most powerful of enemy firepower and often relied on by Space Marine forces to tear an opening in enemy defenses.
There are those within Dion's Chapter who believe that with his modifications and lifetime of experience, he's halfway to achieving that goal in his current body, without having to suffer the crippling, near-mortal injuries that befell other Dreadnought pilots. It is from these that the old Marine has received his nickname, one he prefers by far- Ironhide.
When an initiate of the Brotherhood of Steel- the descendants of what was once the United States Army, their distant ancestors having mutinied on the day of the Great War out of horror over biological experiments being conducted on human prisoners- achieves knighthood, he or she often adopts an appropriate name. The majority of Brotherhood members take names like Kodiak, or Durga, or Gallows, or Gunny, or Artemis.
Initiates tend to do double-takes upon being introduced to Knight Captain Bumblebee.
Well, he was born small, for a child born to Brotherhood parents, and he grew up small- but he's always been a tireless worker and perfectly happy to function all by himself or in a group. Some of his physical accomplishments have been dubbed flat-out impossible, but his response when being told this is that he didn't know they were impossible at the time, so of course they worked. He serves the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel both on the field of combat, with a startling number of Super Mutant kills for someone his size, and in a diplomatic capacity, being the Knight most likely to get along well with any given local population. He's one of the very few members of the Brotherhood who won't take a potshot at random ghouls just for looking like the walking dead.
On the rare occasions that he's out of his armor he tends to wear yellow and hang around with Scribe Spike of the Order of the Shield; Scribe Spike, when he's on duty, usually works directly under Scribe Rothchild on efforts at getting the giant robot Liberty Prime operational.
Minor note: the second one is aboutremindmeof_me, a character for whom we have virtually no background beyond '22 years old, Marine Corps, keeps a journal that sounds awfully stilted'. All the Rowlesburg stuff in his background is stuff I filled in myself, both in the HL-verse and in the AU I plunked him in up above.
innerbrat:Write a short-as-you please AU backstory for one of your characters transposed into a completely different canon universe. Would he be Browncoat or Alliance? Would she be a Slayer or one of the Scoobies? How would your character's powers help him find a niche in the Justice League? How would your Sparklepire retain their essential Sparkleness if they grew up in Uberwald?
And I managed
Born on the largely unremarkable human colony of Ballard in 2511, Gordon Freeman was largely overlooked by most of the local authorities as a young child. Most, but not all, as most six-year-olds don't generally have the capacity to disassemble discarded military-grade weaponry and reassemble it to the point of full functionality. The United Nations Space Command representatives who heard about the feat made some recommendations, and the boy was kidnapped at the age of six and replaced by a flash-clone; his parents never noticed, save that they thought Gordon seemed more talkative than they remembered. Little did they suspect that their younger son was instead being trained like mad, and later physically altered, along with a rapidly dwindling group of children of similar age and potential on the human military capital of Reach. Out of the original class of 150 children, thirty died from the training and side effects of the alterations, twelve were crippled or otherwise rendered unable to ever fight again, and thirty-three ultimately made it all the way through the SPARTAN-II program.
Sometimes Gordon-108 wonders what it would've been like if Dr. Halsey's program had never found him. He's pretty sure he would've liked to go into engineering, or maybe even pure science. But that wouldn't have stopped the Covenant, or the Flood, now, would it.
War, war never changes. It was the inevitable result of the path humanity had chosen. Everyone who entered into the conflict expected victory. Everyone was optimistic. But as the hostilities escalated, optimism faded and society began to collapse.
The great Vaults were built to house the wealthy, the powerful, the influential and those deemed necessary to their survival. They stockpiled their goods and locked the great steel doors behind them, leaving the rest of the world to burn in the inevitable atomic fire.
But not everything burned.
By the year 2077 the coal veins that had once been the backbone of industry and power across the eastern United States were completely tapped out, leaving nothing behind them but hollowed-out mountains. There was no space in the Vaults for the people of coal country, but they knew the land they lived on, and they knew the mines below it. When the storm of world war threatened to break in earnest they took to the tunnels to wait it out, and when the ashes finally settled on the skin of the former world, they crept out to see what awaited them. It was nothing like any world they or their ancestors had ever known, but it was all the world they had. And this time, they would not let it be taken from them.
Your family's ancestors were among the first to take to the mines, and the first to show their faces in the light that dawned on the first of the mountain folk to retake the surface. For generations, your family has been among the guardians and watchmen of the slowly growing surface village nestled in the shadow of the mountains. As the good shepherd will lay down his life for his flock, so have they for their people- and nobody expects you to be an exception.
Your name is Adrian. This is life in New Rowlesburg. And life in New Rowlesburg is about to change.
"The Machine is strong. We must purge the weak, hated flesh and replace it with the blessed purity of metal. Only through permanence can we truly triumph, only through the Machine can we find victory. Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the Machine!"
The Iron Hands chapter of the Space Marines of the Imperium of Man has a reputation for being relatively straightforward and incredibly harsh. And that's by Space Marine standards; by normal human standards they're bloody insane when it comes to survival and standards. Infamous for their extensive use of bionics (rather than being content to rely on massive gengineering, surgery, and external technology), the Iron Hands also eschew the traditional office of Chaplain in favor of their Iron Fathers, specially trained Techmarines who serve to protect the faith of their brethren. One such Iron Father, Dion, is one of the oldest and hardest Space Marines alive; his goal and ambition is to one day serve the God-Emperor of Man in eternal service in the immortal body of a Dreadnought war machine- a large, walking tank which carries both powerful guns and lethal close combat weaponry, armoured to withstand all but the most powerful of enemy firepower and often relied on by Space Marine forces to tear an opening in enemy defenses.
There are those within Dion's Chapter who believe that with his modifications and lifetime of experience, he's halfway to achieving that goal in his current body, without having to suffer the crippling, near-mortal injuries that befell other Dreadnought pilots. It is from these that the old Marine has received his nickname, one he prefers by far- Ironhide.
When an initiate of the Brotherhood of Steel- the descendants of what was once the United States Army, their distant ancestors having mutinied on the day of the Great War out of horror over biological experiments being conducted on human prisoners- achieves knighthood, he or she often adopts an appropriate name. The majority of Brotherhood members take names like Kodiak, or Durga, or Gallows, or Gunny, or Artemis.
Initiates tend to do double-takes upon being introduced to Knight Captain Bumblebee.
Well, he was born small, for a child born to Brotherhood parents, and he grew up small- but he's always been a tireless worker and perfectly happy to function all by himself or in a group. Some of his physical accomplishments have been dubbed flat-out impossible, but his response when being told this is that he didn't know they were impossible at the time, so of course they worked. He serves the Capital Wasteland Brotherhood of Steel both on the field of combat, with a startling number of Super Mutant kills for someone his size, and in a diplomatic capacity, being the Knight most likely to get along well with any given local population. He's one of the very few members of the Brotherhood who won't take a potshot at random ghouls just for looking like the walking dead.
On the rare occasions that he's out of his armor he tends to wear yellow and hang around with Scribe Spike of the Order of the Shield; Scribe Spike, when he's on duty, usually works directly under Scribe Rothchild on efforts at getting the giant robot Liberty Prime operational.
Minor note: the second one is about
remindmeof_me, a character for whom we have virtually no background beyond '22 years old, Marine Corps, keeps a journal that sounds awfully stilted'. All the Rowlesburg stuff in his background is stuff I filled in myself, both in the HL-verse and in the AU I plunked him in up above.
