Locusts (revamped): Sign-Up
 

”We were on Mars.

“We fought for Mars.

“We died for Mars.

“And, in the end, they took Mars from us.

“Our home.

“I know that those of you who have joined our ranks since then have heard the stories…let me tell you that what you have heard isn’t the first of it. Here on Earth, we had warning, we were prepared. Civilians were evacuated and protected…but still, Earth is now a nightmare.

“If Earth is a nightmare, than Mars was Hell itself.

“What we saw on Mars was worse than anything you have seen here. I saw Gatherers collecting hundreds of people as they ran for their lives. I saw Suicide Dogs destroy entire buildings full of people, and a thousand other memories I don’t want.

“We few were on Mars. We fought for weeks, and barely made it out alive, the last people on a transport that the shattered remains of the Mars Fleet Flotilla managed to get out…100,000 civilians out of 1.6 billion, 4,8632 ground personnel out of 50,000, and 13,356 Fleet personnel out of 250,000. The shattered remains of the Mars Defense Forces were combined, and formed the 1st Joint Task Force, the first force to be composed of elements from the Mobile Infantry, the Armored Cavalry, the Colonial Milita, and from Fleet. Several other JTFs have been formed since, but we were the first, and we are the best. We are the Remnant of Mars, and all those who have joined us are the sons and daughters of Mars as well.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you know what’s going on. We’re abandoning Earth. For some of us, this is the first time we’ve lost a homeworld. For others of us, it’s the second time.

“What you didn’t know until know is this: Sons and daughters of Mars…we’re going home.”


Welcome to my second attempt at the Warhammer 40…I mean, Locusts RP.

Yeah…I found out a few weeks ago that with the Locusts, I basically re-invented the Tyrannids. :sweatdrop I suck so bad at coming up with original ideas…not that this idea was very original in the first place. ::shifty::

For those of you who missed the first time around, the first Locust RP was put down by myself for several reasons…mostly because my home computer died, and because I had stretched myself too thin by allowing players to choose any of the military branches for their characters…but had only planned for MI characters in my storyline.

Some time has passed…my family has a new computer, and I am ready to give this another try.

You can look here for the old interest thread and here for the old sign-up thread. In fact, I would suggest you do so…generally because I’m too lazy to repost the information again, but I’ll detail some basic concepts:

1) The Mars Invasion was about 9 years ago.

2)The invasion of Earth has been on going for about 8 years.

3) The Locusts travel through space on “Hives”, rogue planetoids that they move through means unknown at this point.

4) The Locust spawn very quickly. A new swarm is launched almost daily from all the Hives.

5) Some religious fanatics have declared the coming of the Locusts to be divine retribution. These groups are known as Plaguers, as they believe the Locusts are an extreme version of the 8th plague of Egypt. Plaugers are notorious for sabotaging defensive positions, and have lead to the deaths or capture of hundreds of thousands.

6) The Locusts desire bio-matter. They’ll take over a planet until every bit of bio-matter is taken, then move on. To this effect, several strains of Locusts have evolved just for this: Gatherers hover over the landscape, harvesting planet and animal alike. Farmer strains will plant and harvest crops. However, they do not care for soil health, so the soil will become poor in a short time. Rancher strains will mate animals for the purpose of bio-matter…including humans.

7) The Fields are where humans are bred as stock. Not one human has ever escaped from a Field on their own, and those who are liberated often sink into a depression and die. Those that recover have no memory of the Fields. Humans inside the Fields are docile and passive, and offer no resistance whatsoever. How the Locusts do this is currently unknown.

8) As of right now, only Mars and Earth have been attacked. The Outer Colonies on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn remain untouched. The United System League’s capital is now New Phoenix on Titan. USL shipyards and factories are in full force now, for the third year. Almost all civilian production is gear towards the war effort, much like the US economy was during WWII.
9) Going hand-to-hand with the Locusts is considered suicide. To keep ahead of the war, a kill ratio of 1000-to-1 is generally needed. Going hand to hand, the MI gets a kill ratio of about 10-to-1. However, most MI suits will come with a melee weapon just in case…no point in getting killed just because a warrior gets really close to you.

10) All MI armors are equipped with basic sensor and communications gear. They can jump incredible heights, but only specially designed light models can achieve true light. Others may be equipped with jump jets to allow higher leaps, but that depends on the suit type. Armor types will correlate with suit strength as well. Heavies can lift much larger loads than light armors can.

Sign-ups are basically the same, but with a few major exceptions:

1) YOU’RE CHARACTER MUST BE MOBILE INFANTRY! I apologize to those who played CM, AC, or Fleet characters last time, but the storyline is designed around an MI unit, and as such, it will be easier for all parties involved to be MI. This will allow a wider variety of scenarios, as before the only way to involve all the characters would be major battles. Again, I apologize for this…but it’s the best way to go about things, I think.

2) You are all in the 1st Joint Strike Force, also known as the Remnant, as its core is made up of displaced Martian units. The 1st JSF is an elite unit, so you are basically the cream of the crop when it comes to MI. So, as such, we’ll have very few true “newbies”, unless you scored amazing well in school or something.

3) If you feel the undying need to be a higher rank, please remember that you will be expected to take a leadership role if you are. We can’t have a PFC ordering around a platoon of majors and captains, now can we?

4) If you want to do something a little different, I’d be willing to let a couple of players have some sort of robot as a character. This can be anything from a power armor suit that can walk and talk by itself to a KOSMOS type human-looking android that so happens to kick butt.

(double post due to size)

The sign-up sheet remains the same as the first time around:

Character Sheet

Name: Obvious enough
Call sign: Not required, but always fun.
Age: Also rather obvious
Rank: For the most part, you start out as a low level grunt. If you want higher, put it in your sheet, and I’ll approve or deny based on how well made the character is. If you want a command level job (like General or something), PM me and have a very good reason.

Nationality: Are you from Earth? What country? Are you a colonist? Which one? (see the interest thread for colonies)

Appearance:

Personality/Bio


Vehicle/PA Description

Type: Is you’re suit designed for assault? Fire support? That sort of thing.
Name: That’s the name of your armor (this can be the technical number[such as F-22] and the nickname[such as Raptor].
Armor: Light, medium heavy?

Speed: Keep it in line, please. You can’t have heavy armor, 30 weapons, and still expect to cruise down the highway at 300 mph. Heavies can general hit from 30 to 40 MPH. Medium from 40-60. Light from 60-90.

Weapons: Don’t go overboard with this. If you do, I’ll shoot you down. MI is know for being versatile, so you can have anything from mortars to handguns and almost anything in between.

Special: Any above average sensor gear? Comm gear? Jump jets? Have a setup so you can direct orbital strikes? A cloaking field of some sort? If you have an additional technology you want to use, put it here, and I’ll approve or void it.


As an example, here is my character sheet.

Name: James Thorpe Kirkham.

Call sign: Nothing really…most likely referred to The General.

Age: A very fit 52.

Rank: General, commander of the 1st JTF Ground Forces.

Nationality: Martian survivor.

Appearance: The General is a average sized man heightwise, but is basically built like a brick house. He seems wide, even in his suite, like his shoulders have an extra few inches or something. His once black hair is now starting to fill with grey, but he hasn’t slowed down at all. He has a pale complexion, as he is from Mars and has spent a lot of time in the last 8 years in his powered armor.

Personality: The fall of Mars has made the General a hard man. He expects nothing but the best from his people. In combat, he will almost never lose his nerve, and will always be found in the thick of the fight if he has a choice. Despite this, he is known to be nice to the people under him…but they know he will order them to their deaths if need be. However, the General is not a wasteful man, and will explore all options before he orders men to their deaths.

Bio: James T. Kirkham was born and raised on Mars, which had been colonized for over two centuries by that time. He joined the military out right out of high school, and enlisted after his first tour of duty. Over the 30 years he was in, he rose through the ranks of the MI and became a General.

He is the highest ranking Martian officer who survived. He and his men fought the Locust for 2 months during the Invasion of Mars, and got the 100,000 survivors from Mars off planet with the surviving Mars Fleet Elements.

For the past 8 years, the General has been all over Earth, trying to keep the Locusts contained in vain. For the past few months, the 1st JTF has been defending an ad hoc space port on an island in the Great Salt Lake of Utah…a defendable spot due to the large kill zone.


Vehicle/PA Description

Type: Megatech Armor Series 36 Command Type Mk IV
Name: S36-M4, a.k.a. Maestro
Armor: Medium
Speed: 45 MPH top speed
Weapons: Grenade launcher, hand held, capable of rapid fire or single shots. Arm mounted pulse laser. The backup melee weapon is rather unique: a set of monofilament wires come out of the fingers of the suit. They can be magnetized and de- magnetized at will by the suit to help give control to the wires. This is generally under armed for a medium suit…but that’s the sacrifice for what the command suit carries.

Special:
Battlefield Control suite: Gives the wearer of the command suit access to all intelligence coming in from all sources. Creates a scale model of the battlefield that is continuously updated. In a pinch, this can be used as the Command and Control point for an entire battle. Controlled via hand movements of the suit user.

Astro-Comm gear The command suit has a powerful enough radio to contact units in orbit. At least one other suit in the group will have this upgrade. This allows for any number of things, from pick up to giving the location for an orbital strike.

Enhanced Abilities: Command suits are given enhanced strength, speed, and agility to make up for their relative lack of firepower.




So…anyone willing to try this again?

Name: Tarrin von Rikkov
Call sign: Strykker
Age: 33
Rank: Captain/ Drill instuctor
Nationality:Australian
Appearance:6'1", Black hair, Steel grey eyes, muscular due to MI training though not bulky, has a scar running down the left side of his face crossing his eye.

Personality: Outgoing and loves a joke, But when it hit's the fan he's all business.
Bio: Tarrin was born in outback australia to cattle station parents.
Growing up on a cattle station gave Tarrin many advantages for his future MI lifestyle. At a young age he learned how to fire rifles, Fly helecopters, ride motorbikes, atv's and 4wd utes.
During the first part of the invasion on earth his parents died as a hive decended on the large amount of biomatter of his station.
Tarrin himself was almost killed during this battle, He was saved by a squad of MI and nursed back to health.
Shortly after Tarrin joined the MI and soon was placed into training new recruits.
Now that the Locusts have throwen more hives into the frey Tarrin has been placed into the battle once again.

Vehicle/PA Description

Type: long range fire support (sniper)
Name: Megatech Armor Series 33 Infultration type mk V: Reaper
Armor: Light
Speed: 65 mph
Weapons:Barret (50 cal sniper rifle), flamethrower, anti personel mines.
Special:
Cloaking device:Used only when sniping as movement disables this device.
Jumpjets, comms,
movement sensors: warns the user of local movement and approximation of lifesign eg bug, human, cat etc.
Advanced weapons targeting device:This allows for variables in terrain and weather into the targeing arrows allowing for a much more precise shot. (for his sniper rifle)

Looks alright, except for a few tibdits:

There are "only" three Hives...they are all in orbit around Earth at the moment. The fourth hive was destroyed in the last full-scale Fleet action against the Locusts...but it pretty much gutted Fleet as well. The Hives don't make landfall, since they're planetoids, landing on a planet would result in the destruction of all life...not what the Locusts want.

Other than that, it looks alright.

I may be willing to try it again...What are the odds I can more or less copy pasta my old character?

Yeah figured that the hives stayed in orbit, But couldn't for the life of me remember what they call the small armies that touchdown on the surface (so much for the 4 yrs of working for GW lol).

I'd say go ahead and do it.

Of course...I want at least 5 people before I start...and we're at two.

<_<;; I think I had this problem on the last one, too.

Definitely willing to try again. Hope this is to your liking.

Name: William Kerr
Age: 29
Rank: 1st Lieutenant

Nationality: Martian

Branch: Mobile Infantry.

Appearance: William 'Bill' Kerr stands at 6 feet even, with an average build. His shoulders are slightly more broad than normal, but beyond that, he looks fairly unassuming. He masses in at about 173 pounds, and is a regular at the gym. Given his line of work, the emphasis he places on physical fitness isn't surprising. His hair is buzz-cut and black. He has green eyes and a deep tan. He has a rather unremarkable face, and a slightly hawk-like nose, which often gives his 'at ease' expression a hint of arrogance.

Personality/Bio: What do you want me to say? I was on Mars. I grew up there, I had family there. I had a sweetheart there. The Locusts took it all away from me. I was lucky, if you can call it that. I got off that Godforsaken rock with the remnants of my company. There weren't more than twenty of us left when the last boat buttoned up and blasted off. I started on Mars as a lance. By the time they put my company back together, I was platoon sergeant. I guess surviving something like that in one piece puts you on a fast track. We hightailed it in-system. I never felt right abandoning Mars, and whoever we might have left behind, but we were in no condition for any rescue attempts.

Once we hit high orbit around Earth the brass started thinking fast. Complete interdiction, they said, and those rocks wouldn't have a snowflake's chance in hell of getting their hives on the ground. We would stop 'em and roll 'em back. We would be back on Mars. Nice words, cute plan. Didn't work. Those rocks made it into orbit around Earth, and the fleet pulled back, taking the civilians with them. They left the MI and elements of the fleet behind to slow the bugs down, to buy time. We've been buying that time for a very long while now. The only break I've had from combat duty was when I was detached for OCS on Jupiter. I made it through, including the combat evaluation. A lot of my classmates didn't. I was commissioned 2nd lieutenant, and re-attached to my old company. I learned at the right hand of our old man, until he bought it. Not long after, I got a field commission: bumped to 1st lieutenant. I'd been in it long enough that they trusted my judgment under fire.

Now...there's not much left to say. I'm still in one piece, and so is my platoon. And we're going home.

Type: Powered Armour
Name: Megatech Armour Series 35 CS (Command Suit) Mark III
Armor: Medium
Speed: 50 MPH
Weapons (ranged): Gauss rifle, capable of both semi-automatic and automatic fire. Grenade launcher, single-fire system; shoulder-mounted mid-range suppression system.
Hold-out kinetic pistol: short range desperation weapon.
Weapons (melee): hand flamethrower, retractable, shoulder-mounted. Close-range. Effective range of twenty feet.
PA-issue vibrating combat knife. Close range desperation weapon.

Special:

Command circuits: Allows the platoon leader to keep in private contact with his superiors and his first sergeant.
Platoon control suite: a bare-bones version of the Battlefield Control Suite. It allows the MI lieutenant to keep tabs on his squad and his area of responsibility, while also providing minimal status reports on adjacent platoons.
No further enhancements are provided with this version of the command suit.

If there's one thing I've learned here, it's that you don't need a lot of people in an RP to have a good time. Five is a good minimum, though. Oh, right, my character.

Name: Robert Burnelli
Call Sign: Raider One
Age: 37
Rank: Specialist

Nationality: Martian, Caucasian.

Appearance: Robert is standard height, 5 foot 10 inches tall, and within military weight standards, floating around 167lb. He keeps himself fit, so he has an athletic build of long, powerful limbs and broad shoulders. A very flat nose is his prominent facial feature, along with dark brown eyes and curly ginger hair that is almost always kept near buzz-cut level. His left ear has a piercing, the only other feature that displaces him from the standard grunt in MI or CM. When he isn't in his suit, he's wearing standard barracks fatigues.

Personality/Bio:

I used to be a good kid. I was one year out from graduating with a decent degree in smartware engineering. I was probably going to work for some computer engineering corporation for the rest of my life, getting off easy with a decent salary, passable benefits. I may have even found a girl, got married, and raised a family. If push came to shove, I would have pulled off buying a nice sailing boat after retirement, and spent my days sun-bathing on the Atlantic, or the Pacific, or wherever else the currents took me. Ah, Earth, it used to be a good place to look forward to…

Then the bugs nuked Mars. Well, they didn't outright nuke them. Actually, we used nukes, but I'm trailing off now. The bugs might as well have used nukes, because Mars was engulfed so fast Earth and the Colonies barely knew what was going on. I had been working a technician job for the MI as part of a military co-op program with school. When the last outposts were falling, I dropped out of my program and joined MI full-time. I still barely understood the mechanics of a mobile suit before I was out on the field during the last two weeks before we evacuated Mars. I was never a patriot, I always found human conflicts petty, but there was something genuinely infuriating about a bunch of insectoid aliens stomping into the solar system and killing billions of my people.

I had very few grunt skillsets, and even if my smartware programming skills came in handy, I didn't actually qualify as an engineer. They tossed me an impact rifle and a bit of aluminum foil, then threw me near the front lines when the Locust hit Earth. Right, it isn't actually aluminum foil, even the basic MI armor is half-decent, it just looks like aluminum foil when Locust talons tear it apart. I was part of a squad of thirty, in a platoon of a few hundred that was responsible for supporting the AC, who were taking a hell of a beating at the Front. As luck happens, they broke through both Mobile and Cavalry within five miles of our squad's position, and our entire platoon was ordered to reinforce the line immediately. Eight years later and I still don't remember much of what happened, but I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day with me. Our impact rifles were largely useless against them, not even the military strategists had any idea what to expect yet. I try not to blame them. Just a few dozen grunt bugs had broken through by the time our platoon arrived. Something like two hundred and fifty men engaged directly in the struggle, and eighty came out alive. Now remember, being alive after a battle doesn't mean much with the Locust, only thirty or so men and women had all of their limbs still attached. I was one of the thirty, but one of the bugs hurled a rock at our fire squad. One of us shot it and it split into twenty pieces, and just with my luck, one of the pieces capped me right on the head, and tore my helmet in two. I figure that's why I still don't remember much of my first battle, but I woke up in a field hospital five weeks later.

The next five years of my life follow a similar plot, except I'm actually conscious for most of it. Often enough that the real trauma has time to set in, and turn me from that quiet, kind fellow I was into the cynical, sadistic bastard I am now. I’ve participated in over sixty battles on Earth. Thirty minor ones, twenty-four major ones, and due to drastic measures, six orbital ones. Those were fucking interesting. All of it as a remember of the 1st JTF, or “The Remnant”, and the majority of it as a private. Near the anniversary of the loss of Mars, I was promoted to private first class.

Six weeks later I was moved into a special training program for the MI, redoing boot camp all over again. Only this time, I was in half a ton of carbon composite polyalloy and decked out with enough explosives to flatten a mountain. Oh, I’m being modest, it would have to be a small mountain. My military career started to bear fruit, though that didn't make the horrors I saw on the battlefield much easier to bare. For the next year I was part of the BELS Division of Remnant. Behind-Enemy-Lines Scout, and if you don’t have balls after a year of that, you never will. They liked my kill ratio, so I was moved into the second tier training program, BELS Light Artillery Division for the 1st JTF. When I finished the program, I was automatically promoted to Specialist, and I’ve been doing this job ever since.

I’ll probably keep doing this job until I die. Even if they offered me another promotion, and trust me, some have tried, I would tell them to shove it. Nothing, not even a command position, is more satisfying than sneaking behind Locust lines and blowing the shit out of them.

And wouldn’t you know it, now we’re abandoning Earth. My home for eight years, and now it’s gone too. To be honest, we’re going to start running out of planets to fight on.

I wish God could help us all, but I stopped believing in any God nine years ago.


PA Description

Name: EOLDS Mk III (Extended Operation Light Demolitions Suit Marque III)

Armor: Light

Speed: EOLDS Mk III boosts a human sprint to 100km/h.

Weapons: The EOLDS Mk III comes with two weapon systems, not counting the freebie vibroknife every suit gets.

Primary Armament - HVvixen Missile Launcher: The High Velocity missile variants are well-suited for both surface-to-air and surface-to-surface strikes. The plasma-fuelled rockets accelerate at fifteen gees towards the target, via laser guiding from the launcher suit or telemetry from another suit it's communicating with. The plasma high explosives vaporize almost anything in a thirty-meter diameter, and collateral damage tends to be ridiculous as well. The EOLDS Mk III has one rack consisting of six missiles.

Secondary Armament - Raid Mk IV, 2 kiloton tactical nuclear missile: The missiles have a range of 10 km, and are lethal to both suits and bugs within 2km of the blast zone. The missiles have guidance systems similar to the HVvixens, and come equipped with a nominal amount of chaffs to evade Locust interceptors. The EOLDS Mk III has one mini-rack with two missiles.

Special

Class IV “Hawkeye” Sensor Systems: Uses a mixture of smartware and user control to collect as much data as possible and forward it to Battlefield Control suites. Most officers love Hawkeye systems, because they know they’re getting reliable statistics in real-time, everytime. Hawkeye monitors everything from trajectories, temperature, and all of the relevant EM spectrum from UV to infrared. Hawkeye doubles as a state-of-the-art targeting system. Hawkeye also comes with five Sneekbots. Sneekbots are small insectoid-like robots (designed that way for irony, of course) that act as external tendrils to the sensor system. They allow the pilot to be in one place, perhaps a temporary safe spot, while he or she deploys the robots into a target area. Sneekbots have a top speed of 20km/h, and are designed with stealth in mind.

Hiberation “Stealth” System: The suit powers down most systems, including weapons, and switches from its normal fuel cells to batteries. The batteries only function is to keep the pilot alive, mimic ambient temperature and colour, and for all intents and purposes, make the suit invisible to bug eyes. The suit can move at one-quarter top speed in stealth mode, with an increased chance of being seen based on the speed the suit moves.

Everyone looks alright so far.