#corporate problems

Wtf.

What is this?!

Why is my coffee greasy?!!

I think I’m gonna call it the Corporate Problems AU, because this ship is full of Mira corporation’s Biggest Problems!

This au sits on the foundations of a lot of background worldbuilding that, admittedly, isn’t mine. At some point years ago, I read the Mimicry series on Ao3 by missteavee, and it was so good that it irrevocably rewired my brain, and completely changed the way that i view Among us. That worldbuilding is now the only thing I can think of as among us story cannon. So. It’s fantastic go check it out. There are a lotta elements that are important in like, How This World Works, but imma put a summary of the Important Bits (plus a few probably less important bits, because its fun) at the end of this post.

Because I have been Thinking about The Characters. I have ideas and concepts, but no plot. Which is a problem. But we’re not gonna think about that right now because Concepts and Characters are Fun!

The Main Cast, the crew, are Scar, Grian, Impulse, Skizz, Tango, Jimmy, Etho, Pearl, and Gem. All of them are hiding something, and all of them lied, frauded, or hacked their way onto the ship so that as far as Mira’s databases are concerned, this is a perfectly normal, approved crew traveling to Polus and following all regulations. They are not. And no one group is aware that none of the others are legitimate Mira employees either! This ship houses Chaos.

For starters, the integrity, (the name of the skeld ship, which I am treating as a standard class of Mira corporate space ships, each of which has its own name) actually belongs to a group of space pirates. Grian, scar, and jimmy stole the ship, disconnected it from all Mira systems, and proceeded to make a number of definitely illegal modifications, including making it suitable as their full-time living space. Grian used to work for Mira as a xenobiologist, until he managed to discover Mira’s corporate-genocide-coverup. Scar had been a pirate moving himself around Miras various corporate sectors and stealing tech and information for years at that point, and jimmy was Grian’s “I know a guy” computer tech guy to help them gut the ship of all of Mira’s influence.

Etho was the original founder of Mira, before it grew into a huge company, and stayed on the board as the primary influence in the company as it grew, until the rest of the board decided he had a few too many morals, and attempted to assassinate him via space-transport-malfunction. He ended up stranded on an unexplored planet, but survived. But that happened decades ago. He has not aged. He might possibly be immortal now, we have no idea.

Tango is an imposter, native to Polus, and a soldier in the very much active war that Mira is completely covering up. He doesn’t know that most of Mira’s employees don’t know that they’re fighting a war. He’s tech-savvy, and a very good shapeshifter by his species standards. He’s not red, because Grian’s red, but I can’t decide if I want to make him a light “frost” blue, or the shade of blue that’s literally called “tango blue”. Probably the latter. Im not sure if there’s gonna be another imposter on the ship, or who they are if they’re there.

For the rest of the crew, I’m still kinda figuring out What Their Deal Is. I think I’ve got impulse and skizz down, but from here on out, things might be subject to change.

Impulse is a bit of an inventor, with credentials in physics, and a lot of experience dabbling in other fields as well. He discovered or created something that the government was not thrilled with. I think that thing might have been a fully sentient, sapient AI, and I think that AI was skizz. After having his research publication denied, and the narrative equivalent of the FBI showing up at his house to try and confiscate his research and tech, he and skizz went on the run. They stole some advanced tech, probably from Mira, to build skizz a hyper-realistic, or possibly partially organic body, and decided that hacking into Mira’s databases and getting themselves an extended stay on Polus, one of the most remote research stations, would be a good way to hide.

Gem and peral I am much less sure of.

Gem is the ship’s acting medic. She has absolutely no medical experience. I wanted to have scientist gem, because I think that’s a fun character. She’s a xenobiologist and anthropologist. Possibly officially, possibly not. She wants to get to Plous for her own reasons, and is definitly not actually a miracle employee. One idea I had was to make her a retired or hiding mercenary or bounty hunter or something, but I’m not sure. I also kinda want to make her the other imposter, just because she gets imposter so frequently in the recent among us streams.

Peral, I really have no idea. She’s another candidate for the other imposter. She’s probably not human either way. She is a chemist though, that part of her credentials, at least, isn’t fake.

You throw all of these characters into the close quarters of a spaceship for 6-9 months, and intrigue, secrets, and shenanigans ensue! That’s about all I got for plot so far. Maybe overthrowing Mira, who knows.

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For context, here’s the other worldbuiling this au rests on:

Imposters— they are a species of sapient predatory mimics who are native to the planet Polus. When Mira scientists first set up on Polus, they drilled into one of the imposter-inhabited caves, and had a rather disastrous first contact. The cave they drilled into was a steam cavern, seemingly inhabited by hundreds of little alien worms. Mira labeled these worms as Polus Lifeform Type x223, and deemed them of high scientific interest. Recently, the company had issued an order that these worms are very scientifically valuable, and to collect and flash-freeze samples en masse. These worms are actually the newborn stage of imposters, and the steam caverns are their nurseries. None of the average Mira employees are aware of this. The imposters are in a fully militarized guerrilla warfare against a force attempting to genocide them. It is heavily implied that this is not the first alien species they have encountered and had to fight off.

Scar Goodtimes

Perfect shade: “Sky Orange”, #F79802

Scar goodtimes has been a space pirate for a long time now, even though he’s only had a proper ship for a few years. Before that, he bounced himself around positions in a number of tech companies, including mira, by modifying their personell databases and assuming an alias. He would plop himself in a position for a few months, sometimes as long as a year, use it as access to steal information, corporate secrets, and tech, then disappear, fend tha good stuff through cub, and then use the less useful stuff to scam others for way more than, say, instrument sanitization procedures, were worth. 

Eventually, he assigned himself as grian’s new lab assistant, under the alias “tangerine”. Since he's been in so many different positions in the company, together with grian’s research, he’d slowly collected all the puzzle pieces to mira’s giant coverup, and he figures out the truth about polus, the imposters, and Polus Lifeform X223. Horrified, this is much bigger than anything hes dealt with before, and he may be a pirate, but theres a line! And honestly corporations were already over it without the attempted genocide. It turns out that Grian makes this same discoverer at a similar time, and when they eventually talk about it, they decide to join forces about it. Neither one trust the government to handle it, and honestly Grian was already doing some proably-not-company-policy experiments off the books, so they steal a ship together and escape. Grian enlists the help of jimmy to jailbreak the ship from Mira’s influence, and they take it to cub for some very much illegal modifications. Cub’s just happy to have a whole ship to play with. Scar, Grian, and jimmy spend a few years doing some proper space pirate vigilantisim, before they decide they need to get on-site, and deal with at least some of this stuff on polus itself. They need to be on one of Mira’s polus research stations. So, they pose as a perfectly normal, mira standard ship.

I have three different shades of pink for gem, and I can’t decide which one I want to use. 

Aaaahhhh!! Hello!!! People! are interested in this au I’m so excited!!!

Ok, colours! I’m a little bit rambley, (I’m excited) so you’re getting some of my thought process about it too

So general colours are basically from the colours they play with in streams, with a few tweaks, because they work. But then we get to pick our specific shades, which is where the fun begins! Because there’s a clash between the worldbuilding, your colour is your name, and the fandom, hermits have, y’know, names. So I’ve had a lot of fun figuring out how to make those two concepts mesh!

Some of them are easy, for instance, Pearl is a Pearlescent White. #EDEFEF

Some of them are harder. Grian isn’t exactly a colour.

So, for the pirates, as part of declaring themselves pirates, they ditch their perfect shades, and choose a non-colour name.

Scar, who’s been doing this a long time, is orange, specifically “sky orange”, #F79802. On the ship though, he’s going by “deep saffron” he’s gone by a lot of different orange aliases over the years.

Grian is a Crimson red, #CF1B24 he doesn’t have an alias for this ship, since its a long mission, crimson is a not uncommon red shade, and he’s more attached to his perfect shade than scar.

Jimmy is a light cyan (considered a different colour from blue) #8DDCDC I think his perfect shade is “seafoam cyan” but you could also call it a bunch of different things, light turquoise, aqua, pale cyan, etc.

Tango is an imposter, and can change his colours pretty easily. For this assignment, he’s a light blue. (Because grian’s red) my original plan was to make him a really light dungeon-mastery blue, and call it frost. Then I discovered that there is literally a colour called “tango blue” #339bcf and it’s even kinda decked-out-ish.

Gem is pink, her perfect shade is “tourmaline” but she just goes by Gem as a nickname. She’s one of these three, and I can’t decide which, #F6909D, #fc5a8d, #f35d8b, honestly they’re all pretty similar, but still.

Impulse is definitely yellow. He’s saffron, #F4C430. But also there’s a colour called impulse, but it’s a purple-y maroon #894961 So… he is on the run from the government. It wouldn’t be unprecedented to go with a fake identity, and he thinks the best way is to present yourself as a completely different colour (it’s not) and we don’t otherwise have a purple on the ship!

Skizz is a nice deep blue, Zaffre #0818A8 he’s also an AI that has only recently gained a body, and doesn’t have any particular attachment to his perfect shade as a name. He probably picks “skizz” himself. Maybe it’s an acronym. No I don’t know what it means.

Maybe to make gem more cottagecore it could be that she has more of a survivalist background (if going the special-ops route) or specifically she’s some sort of biologist (scientist route).

To add to the science imposter approach (if it goes with world building) maybe the imposter’s world has been subject to a lot of environmental destruction from MiraCorp and her goal is to restore the environment to how it was before in order to help her species. Maybe the environmental destruction has caused a sort of polar ice caps problem where an old pathogen has gotten out that only seems to infect imposters (ie. infected mode from the among us 3D streams) which could also serve as further anti-MiraCorp motivation for the imps.

Her love for her world and people drove her to searching the planet and then beyond for ways to maintain the old ecosystem, leading her to harsh terrain and dangerous situations from which she’s learned to be cunning and how to fight/survive. She’s on the ship because she’s finally found a way to save the environment/specific important species and therefore stop the infection of her people and is taking it back to Polus

It could bring in the whole fond-of-nature cottagecore stuff (idk how to incorporate the actual aesthetic tho t.t) as well as the survival aspect but idkkkkk

(The brainworms grow stronger by the day—)

Hello hello again! Sorry for the late reply, irl Stuff Has Been Happening

Hmmmmmm I like it.

While not necessarily from Mira I think it’s safe to say that Polus has…. (Looks at the art of the planet) certainly experienced some,, severe environmental damage yes.

I think an imposter gem would be a more information-oriented operative.The imposters are a technologicaly advanced society at war. Any informational, advcements, or technology that their enemies have that they don’t would be valuable to steal. I think gem would be a scientist in background, tasked with long term infiltration and retrieval of any useful information, scientific or planning. Her going to Polus would not only get them an operative within Mira’s Polus facilities, but also one with the specialist knowledge to figure out exactly what Mira does and doesn’t know about their planet. She has a scientific background, good enough shapeshifting, and psychological manipulations to keep herself safe in the event that she’s suspected, and combat skills should they become necessary, because after all she is in the field.

This is definitely one of my favourite options.

I think it’s between this one and explorer/mercenary/pirate-ish gem runaway from a rich family to have a much more exciting life and Perdue the infinite interesting possibilities in space

Following the bounty hunter/retired mercenary kind of vibe I think it could work if she was either a runaway royal/important rich kid kind of person (depending on the overall world building but gives reason for her being good at combat, having strange knowledge from being privately tutored, and keeps in line with the fact that she’s one of the youngest hermits/people trust her easily).

It could be that she was further in the line of succession or that some family conflict caused her to hide out on the ship (specifically two siblings ganging up on her to get her out of the succession running as it’s been shown many times that Gem CANNOT handle 2v1’s, or a complicated custody battle between her many parents over her and/or her siblings (given how basically all the old folk in hermitcraft joke that she’s their daughter and vice versa, as well as the fandom’s interpretation of her and grian/jimmy/fwhip being siblings in the lore).

Alternatively, if you want to make her imposter, she could be impersonating a royal/important heiress that had done a charity event/tour/sponsorship on the infected planet (which also fits the whole sunny-disposition-murderous-intent thing she’s got going on), that could tie in the lore of her being a newer member of hermitcraft and the life series’ (less knowledge of things she ‘should’ know about the folk she’s impersonating) as well as tying into the general Gem lore of her being an omnipotent being that lives several lives in several different universes via aliases and such

Anyway sorry for the yapping— the concept you have going for the au is so cool imo and I lowkey just have gem brainworms

Girl(gender neutral) I write such long asks when I’m interested in something, you have nothing to apologise for I promise I’m thrilled. In fact, you’re getting a long reply, because this turned into brainstorming gem concepts!

Gem brainworms are the best brainworms

Mmmmmmm. Run away heiress/nobel gem is intriguing…. I have been marinating on this concept, and can now confirm that my biggest trouble with gem is there are too many good options!

I think there are four directions that are standing out to me for her, imposter, run away heiress, ambitious scientist, mercenary.

I don’t know much about the polosian (imposter) government systems except that their military is relatively decentralised, and beyond that, if she’s running away form Polus, I don’t know why she would be headed back, so those two are kinda mutually exclusive.

I think the favourite that’s coming out so far is heiress who ran away from her family and became a mercenary/explorer instead, on her way to Polus to kill someone specific, and study the life there to boot! She’s got the private tutoring and interest in specific topics, a wide and strange set of skills, and it opens up for the situation of “I don’t know! I’ve only done stitches on myself! It’s very different on someone else!!”

But the other options are also so good!!

Mercenary + imposter and you get polosian special ops, again with the very specialised training and mission, and absolutely no in-depth knowledge of human biology!

Or scientist + imposter, imposter but with added “would rather be studying them, but Also The Infanticide, So Die” this is a very curious and cunning gem

Mercenary + scientist gem is… an interesting combination and I’m not sure what would come of it.

But also all of these feel like they’re missing something so very Gem, and I Don’t Know What It Is!!

Aacugch!

I think it’s the cottagecore. Even when she’s doing unsettling and creepy she’s still doing cozy cottagecore.

How do you make a mercenary cottagecore?