#ips-n

Recently finished commission for @bmn82.

Smith-Shimano: Speed. Grace. Precision. To advance- to hone the cutting edge- is more than just a drive, it’s transcendence. Man is divine, and his chariot is wreathed in gold and steel.

HORUS: Something stirs in the depths of the machine vast and unfathomable. It sings sweet promises to the mad and promises dominion to those unshackled by the chains of reality. Break free. Know the unknowable.

IPS-N:

Since playing her in the game I made her for is looking like a Thing That Won't Happen, I'm going to put the stuff I have for my recently made LL2 Lancer character here on my Tumblr. The précis or briefest summary: Child of two IPS-N long-haul Dawnline transport crew / company owners.

Uzbekistani-descended father. Nigerian-descended mother.

Grew up learning to pilot from her mother. Learned engineering and mech repair from her father. Happy, if slightly lonely, childhood.

Parents intended her to inherit the family business when they retired. Didn't account for the impression an Albatross Wing would make when they saved the family from a pirate attack. Her parents gifted Monday a Subjectivity-Enhancement Suite to permit her to pilot in much the same intuitive and plugged-in way her mother did. When she got old enough, informed her parents she wanted to seek the Makteba and become a part of Albatross. It...didn't go over well, initially.

Lots of well-meaning worry and concerned argument. Eventually she convinced them. Departure was extremely emotional moment. She left with gifts of new clothes, and a properly equipped Everest.

Above: A Young Monday departing to seek the Makteba. On her way through the Long Rim's transit hubs to seek Albatross' holdings, she got waylaid by a recruiter for IPS-N and Trunk Security. Got talked into signing up with the Corpro instead. "We've got brand new frames we're working on that I really think you'd be perfect for." "Oh! Cool, I thought the Zheng was a really neat concept." "Surprise! You thought it was Zheng, but it was I! Caliban!" At 17 subjective, she started working for IPS-N Trunk Security. They immediately slapped her into a Caliban and put her on a small breach-and-clear team. Turns out she was quite good at the job. But! It was not what she was promised. It was not what she had wanted. The disillusionment was real and persistent and alienating. To paraphrase and adapt the line running around about "The Hobbit Generation," she was promised wealth and adventure; she received only bloodshed and ruin.

Above: TFW you set out to join the U.S. Marshalls, but some city slicker talked you into signing up with the Pinkerton Detective Agency instead, and it's finally sunk in.

Above: The INTERNAL reaction to the previous sinking realization. (Because autism and masking are A THING). [as an aside, will try to find the Picrew I made those in to credit the artist properly. Same for the first one.] You know what's also alienating? Persistent animosity and ‘mishap’ culminating in one of the original team’s Tortuga pilots with whom she had a long history of issues ‘accidentally’ blasting off her Caliban’s left leg at the knee. And, y'know, her leg as well. She passed out due to blood loss. By the time she was back to cogent, she came to in the med bay with a (literally) shiny new prosthetic leg courtesy of IPS-N. To her horror and fury, she found the other party had already spread his version of events. At that point, either she was convinced or she convinced herself that he'd been trying to deniably kill her. She resolved to not give him a second shot at her. She called him to her quarters. Separately, she begged leave to print up her mech and take it to quarters to tinker with, as she needed to adapt it for her new center of gravity, balance, the general specs of her new cybernetic prosthetic. She did that, yes. She also used the opportunity to meet the teammate whose Decksweeper shot took her leg off at the knee Flayer gunshot first. He died in the opening shot. So did the one teammate she actually liked, the quartet's Lancaster pilot who'd come with the Tortuga pilot to check on her. She used the shotgun's butt to cave in the squad's other Caliban pilot's skull in before the first bodies had hit the decking. She then went from Point A (crimescene, hers) to Point B (hanger containing ship, stealable) in as effcient and direct a manner as possible. No one who tried to stop her did so fruitfully or for particularly long. Stole a smaller ship in their cutter's hangar. Passed the fuck out due to the recklessness of how she escaped (She undertook a nearlight bolt in the opposite direction from that in which the ship was already moving. She woke up to crusted blood from reopened wounds, light headedness from blood loss, several internal fractures and a fair bit of internal and external bruising from the sheer g-forces exceeding the rating of the ship's crash-chair capability, and a desperate need to scour the memory of the past (or at least the evidence of it) from her skin and hair and to burn the clothes she was wearing and print new ones.

TFW you spent almost 20 years playing it safe and keeping your head down to try and finish out your licensure before quitting, but then your squadmate tried to kill you, and you have been taught and trained to take a very direct approach to dealing with people who try that.

(Image courtesy of the Build a Bastard Picrew)

One shower later, she resolves to go to (literal) ground somewhere in realtime to figure out her next moves from there. Somewhere with a blink gate for both ease of escape and ability to check for news coming off the omninet.

WHO UP PILOTING THEY MECH Respectively: the SCSP-Cetus Mk. III and the Avesta Unit F2R: Ereshkigal.

Had my first ever proper session aaaaaaaaand It's clear i've joined in the middle of something [tm]

It started with me and the other newbie getting introduced to the party after they have been out hunting megafauna for a scientist.

Then we're put into UNION MANDATED TEAM BUILDING (I.e barhopping and a mock battle to teach us, the new players, basic combat)

THEN we find out our instructor is an unregistered NHP aaaaand she's in league with the planetary President (whom was though dead but that was a clone???) And he offered the party a riveting speech about his grand ambition to use the power of friendship to kill/banish/??? RA and shatter the First Contact Accord.

Arguing ensues with the party as said President spills all the tea about them.

Siblings have shot at eachother. The furry is questioning their life choices. The biologist is contemplating evolution and i'm there like-