Badmoon's Conspiracies, Intrigues and Strategems - M lf F (characters)

[badmoon1955]

Hi!  Badmoon1955 here.  Great to meet you!

A little about me
I'm a cis-hetero male living on the East coast of the USA.  I've been roleplaying since before there was an internet.  Yeah, that means I'm old (which in no way implies that I only play old characters!), and yeah there were other things before the internet (ask me for details if you want a long-winded history lesson).  I'm also a published writer of short stories and poems (no novels, but I haven't given up... shopping one around right now in fact).  See that?  Parenthetical phrases in three consecutive sentences.  Maybe that will give you an idea why none of my novels have been published.  ;D

I've also been playing a variety of TTRPGs on and off since the mid-70s, but that's not really what I'm looking for here, at least not at the moment.

As it says in the title, I'm currently looking for people to play female characters opposite my male characters, although player gender is irrelevant.  Situationally realistic characters and settings are my preference, but of course what's realistic in a high fantasy setting is very different than what's realistic in a contemporary slice-of-life drama or romance.  Regardless of setting or situation realistic characters should have flaws and baggage along with their hopes and dreams; back-story and character development are important.  And, finally, the story itself (not just interaction between the characters) should provide adequate dramatic tension to keep the characters on their toes.

Just to get it out of the way, here's my Ons/Offs/etc. thread, and for good measure here is my "introduction" post.

There are a few story ideas below, and I'll be adding more as they come to me.  Please respond by PM if anything entices you, or if you have an idea of your own you'd like to suggest.

Logistics

• I prefer to play on the forums, or by PM, or by email.  I'm not unwilling to play by IM or Discord, but my real life tends to be chaotic, so scheduling a regular time for play is nearly impossible.
• Post length and post frequency are 100% negotiable.  Posting 200-600 words, once or twice a week, has been my norm, but I can do more or less if that works better.
• When a story requires it, I'm able and more than willing to play multiple characters (some number of NPCs along with my main character).  If you want to play multiple characters, or take turns playing the NPCs, that's great (but not required).

Ideas
* I will consider playing any of the stories below with roles (and therefore genders) reversed.  For example, if you'd rather play a female version of the detective character in Everybody Lies send me a pitch and we'll discuss it.



Title: Everybody Lies

Status: Available
Genre: Noir / Hardboiled Detective (with potential supernatural and/or conspiracy elements, we can discuss)
Setting: New York City, late 1940s or early 1950s
Your Character: My "Doctor Watson", exact nature to be negotiated but not permanently subservient

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

“Semper fucking Fi,” he muttered to himself, upset that his old CO had once again taken advantage of their relationship to bring him a case nobody else wanted to touch.  Business at the Holden Detective Agency (proprietor and sole employee, Grant Holden) was booming and he already had more than he could handle, though far too much of it was less savory than he liked.  That was the life of a private detective, after all, especially when word gets around the PI in question isn’t too picky about who hires him or for what.

Actually there didn’t even seem to be a case.  The police had already decided the woman’s missing husband, a local accountant with a checkered history, had simply run off with another woman.  In fact the sister of the woman in question had confirmed a long-time affair, and even claimed she had driven them to the airport where they boarded a flight to the Maldives.  A one way flight.  But the wife insisted the whole thing was part of a conspiracy or cover up.

Grant had little patience and less time for such foolishness, but Captain Dandridge had fought hard to keep him in the service when things had gone wrong.  It didn’t matter that she’d been unsuccessful, he owed her, and apparently this spurned wife was a long-time friend.

Weeks ago he’d decided to hire an assistant, at least someone who could take calls and keep the files in order, and if he was lucky this assistant might (with a little training) be able to do some light investigative work.  One of his regular clients, a man most likely linked to organized crime (though to ask would be unthinkably rude), had heard that he was interviewing and claimed to have ‘the perfect person’ for the job.

Grant looked at the clock on his cluttered desk.  Almost noon.  Almost time for the candidate to arrive for her interview.

Title: Endings... Beginnings...

Status: Available
Genre: Post-Apocalypse
Setting: New Orleans and surrounding area (bayous, swamps, etc.), near future (2050-ish)
Your Character: I intentionally left a lot of leeway for who and what you want to be, and also what you'd like this 'world' to be like and contain.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

The asteroid had not been a world killer.  All but a few mountain-sized chunks of rock had vaporized high above the arctic wastes.  But the asteroid’s destruction had dumped megatons of energy and huge quantities of an exotic semi-organic gas into the upper atmosphere.  As a result, storms of unprecedented size and swiftness whipped across the surface of the Earth, laying waste to factories and fields alike, toppling skyscrapers like houses of cards.  In the wake of these storms a mutagenic blue-green mist settled over the land and seeped into the water.  Many human beings died outright, either from the conflagration itself or from the toxic mist.  Some of those that survived were ‘changed’.  Non-human species and plants fared better, at least fewer died, but they had not been any more immune to the changes than humans.

During a single week the human population of the earth fell from 8 billion to levels not seen since biblical times.

20 years later...

Ethan Wade remembered a time when cities made him feel very alive.  Growing up in a small corn belt town he’d always felt drawn to places full of bright lights, tall buildings, the endlessly fascinating collection of people, the lifestyles, the sheer energy.  So by “The End”, at the age of 28, the tech startup he had co-founded had provided wealth and connections enough for him to fully experience New York City, Boston, Dallas, Chicago, and L. A., not to mention Paris, London, Beijing and Tokyo.  Perhaps not all of his company’s meteoric rise, or his own for that matter, had been strictly kosher, but that was irrelevant now.  More relevant were the feelings of dread that had totally replaced the excitement.

Things now lurked in cities, along with the inevitable pockets of poisonous mist too easily stumbled across in old subway tunnels and below-ground parking garages.  People were still drawn to these once heavily populated places, too, but these people were inevitably predatory, desperate, or insane; always very dangerous.

Today...

A deep hot pain in his side reminds him why he’s here, on the outskirts of what was once a beautiful city, but is now a dank and desolate tumult of half-submerged buildings and encroaching swampland.  The wound would heal, he had enough experience (and antibiotics) to be certain of that, but the circumstances surrounding the injury have swirled in his mind for weeks.  At first he’d resisted, telling himself that the dangers were too great.  But inevitably curiosity had dragged him from the regimented solitary life he’d been living for years back out into the world.  All the way to this godforsaken place.

Once more bright flashes of memory flitted through his mind.  The sound of an approaching vehicle, an extreme rarity though not unheard of.  His desperate leap into a deep swampy gully when he’d seen bound captives and uniformed guards in the back of the big truck.  The ragged fragment of ancient guardrail impaling him.  The agony.  The frothy blood on his lips.  And then, as he struggled to be silent, the unmistakable sound of a cell phone ringing as the truck passed, followed by a woman’s nonchalant answer: ‘hello’.

A few days later, still wounded and on foot, he’d managed to track the truck’s progress down I10, then southward through the wilds of what had once been Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge – a terrifying experience – then to the outskirts of New Orleans herself.  He knew he was crazy to be doing this.  He’d always kept himself in good shape, even after “The End”, but he was nearing 50, his collection of scars and old injuries impressive, his collection of weapons and ammunition much less so.

Yet here he is, driven by an unrealistic hope that somewhere, somehow, a remnant of technological civilization has survived.

Title: The Enemy of my Enemy

Status: Available
Genre: Supers
Setting: Southern California, contemporary
Your Character: Yosuke's mugger in the scenario described below.  The two of us are forced to cooperate after being abducted together.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

Nobody seemed to know why or how a handful of people across the globe had started manifesting powers.  It didn’t seem to be isolated to any particular age, gender, ethnicity, geographic location or socioeconomic class.  Also uncertain was when it had begun.  One octogenarian claimed he’d developed superhuman strength as a kid growing up in the slums of Hong Kong, later making a good living as a stunt person in martial arts movies.  Stranger still, the man claimed that his mentor, an expatriate British woman living in Kowloon, had been even stronger.  But two things were abundantly clear.  The number of people affected (some said afflicted) had increased dramatically over the past few years, and such people, once found, were almost always persecuted, sometimes even killed.  Fear, as usual, made people both stupid and dangerous.

Yosuke was a third generation descendant of Japanese immigrants and resident of Pismo Beach California.  His mother was a criminal lawyer, and from what little she’d said about his father he gathered the man had primarily been a surfer for whom surfing was a lifestyle, not a profession.  Yosuke himself had never had much ambition, but under constant pressure from his mother, managed to pick up a degree in English Literature and become a high school English teacher.  His one passion was swimming, a sport in which he excelled enough to break his University’s record in the 200-yard individual medley.  As a result he also coached the high school’s boys and girls varsity swim teams.

On his 27th birthday Yosuke went to Bakersfield with friends, had one too many drinks, and ended up staggering out of a bar in the company of a scantily-dressed young woman.  Unfortunately the woman was not as interested in him as she was in the expensive watch his mother had given him as a gift earlier in the day, and what she might find in his wallet.  She easily lured him into an alley behind the bar where she sensed, quite literally, there were no cameras.  Putting a hand seductively against his chest and pressing her lips to his she emitted a surge of electricity through both fingers and lips, an act that had never failed to stun her ‘prey’.  But this time something different happened.  The electricity arced between them over and over, amplified, lighting up the alley like a welder’s torch.

The woman’s last thought before they collapsing onto the dirty asphalt alongside Yosuke was that she hadn’t seen any of the indications or markings her kind used to communicate with each other.  “You should have told me,” she gasped between convulsions, looking both confused and sorrowful.

A locally infamous police officer, currently suspended for severely beating a young man who tried to rob a convenience store by levitating the cash register out a window, just happened to be driving by.  He saw the fireworks and knew instinctively that ‘freaks’ were involved.  When he found the unconscious pair he hefted them both into the back of his van and drove away.  Unfortunately for Yosuke and his assailant, this policeman was heavily involved with one of the most extreme anti-powers hate groups, ‘Humankind First’, or HKF.

Title: The Fall of Lyden

Status: Available
Genre: Low fantasy, although some forms of "magic" do exist
Setting: Similar to Europe circa 1250-1300
Your Character: You will play the princess in the scenario below.  I would also like you to play her retinue, excluding the guard captain; a half-dozen retainers of various types.  I've left plenty of room for you to flesh out both the main character and the NPCs, or we can do it together if you prefer.
My Character: Here's where it gets tricky.  I envision playing more than one character, starting with the guard captain then introducing other PCs and NPCs as needed, depending on where the story goes (very open world/open plot).  Who will be my PC, rather than an NPC, won't be known when we start.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

Sent away to live in the lands of her enemies at the age of 12, an exchange of princesses between two kingdoms to maintain an unstable peace, her mother had finally negotiated terms of return.  It had been 8 long years.

She had been more ignored than mistreated by her ‘hosts’, left to live in isolation with only a modest group of retainers from her homeland for company.  Tutors and teachers were provided, of course; the exchange agreement specified that she was to learn the things any daughter of royalty must learn.  On rare occasions, balls and banquets mostly, she was dressed in finery and trotted out, but only when it was politically expedient to do so and only a very tight leash.

But that was all over now.  After a two-month journey, a caravan trip across the Black Desert followed by a harrowing week shipboard, crossing the Sea of Storms, she and her tiny retinue finally docked at Cambrek, a port city only a day’s ride from her home, the capital city of Lyden.

* * *

It was clear something was wrong as soon as they disembarked.  The soldier who met her guard captain on the dock was wounded, his face blackened by smoke, his horse sweaty and exhausted.  The men with him were equally shabby.  Captain Garr talked animatedly to the man, both repeatedly pointed off into the distance, in the direction of Lyden.  A dark pall of smoke hung above the horizon where they pointed.  All faces were grim.

* * *

“Lyden has fallen, Princess.  Pillaged and put to the torch.”  Sir Garr was blunt, as he had always been with her.

“What of my family,” she asked, then after a moment’s hesitation, “and who did this terrible thing?”

Sir Garr looked at her.  The first time she could ever remember his eyes meeting hers directly.  “I know not.  But we must get you to safety.  Perhaps we can return...”

“No,” she said, before he could finish.  “Not ever.”