The Union Chronicles (RP environ open to all Unioners, tagged or not)

[The Syndicate Leagues]

// Forum Roleplay environment spanning the entirety of UN ZOI, for both individual and shared RPs. All UN| and indie Unioners can contribute. Format according to your own interests, only rule is you state the character name.

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[size=large]Subject: [color=#40FF00]-name of your character-[/color][/size]
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[size=medium][font=Open Sans]-RP story-[/font][/size]
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Pacifica Base
Tanner Belt
Bering System

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There was no glass on Pacifica. No windows to scry the universe through. No puncture marks for a station under perpetual bombardment by a nature struggling to coalesce a planet out of her.

Pacifica. The centre point of Rheinland’s children that had somehow found itself imbued with the name of a faraway, desolate ocean, on the far side of planetary sol, well beyond the intransigent lines of nationhood. It was an irony for the privileged exile few - Oceans weren’t where you lived, where you survived. Oceans were vessels, passages to new lands. The Imperials never had any intent to keep root on Pacifica - Pacfica rooted them.

Spend enough time in the stillness of the infinities and it becomes a home more beguiling than any promised land. Pacifica, an island amidst an airless sea, once a necessity born of revilement, became a sanctuary. Industrious, industrial men, unbound by the needs for survival, air and food and short of work, carved foundries from the dead rock, lining silicate and carbon ice with carbon fibre, nickel with steel, building cities in the the heart of what, when humanity was long dead, would become the molten heart of a new, blue world, carving its way around the orbit its young, yellow star.


A hundred kilometres square of rock, blasted in geysers into space as the O’neil colony became carved from the nucleus of the virgin world. A space habitat is just a ship sans drives, and in the hands of her master craftsman, the ship grew to fill her frame. If a ship is built for travel, then, for the thousands of families who had fleshed Pacifica since the betrayal days, Pacifica was not a ship for traversing space.

It was a means of traversing the future.

In the bowels of the planetesimal, fire lit her walls.

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"Though the past is scarred and the future untold"
" Be the boot heavy, the vacuum cold."
"I of the Liga,  do not fold"
"For suits or saints or beggar's gold.
Information - Recruitment - Message Dump - Feedback

[Arno Schultzky]

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Subject: Gunda Riehl.

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Pacifica, from a distance, looked vaguely like a potato.

One of Gunda’s prime duties as the highest ranking field member of Wing-Com was blatting derogations such as this one - but it was true. Pacifica, from four hundred kilo-kilometres carried a dangerously tuber-ish appearance. The illusion wasn’t reduced by the fact that the potato was budding sprouts.

Within the dockyard gantry sat the unarmed, unsprayed, untamed hulk of fibre and plasteel plates that would formulate a Hel cruiser. A foreign eye would have mistaken her for complete, her engine cowls radiant in the furious sun, her tungsten frame not yet patina-d with the cresote of rock and ash that were the mark of a wise, combat weary warship.


“Virgin ship. N-74.” She noted, pushing gee prograde, a half-eye on the antics of the home support wing like a babysitter with a gaggle of children who can’t quite figure out how not to soil themselves, but are tenacious enough to know where the bleach bottles are kept. “Steady, Lambda four, you’re cutting the waypoint close.”

The Lucifuge decloaked, unfurling itself from the veils of ether with enough aplomb to send her proximity sensors snarling.

Her cockpit glass fuzzed as the forgelight of the star as the bulk of the corvo painted her Arbeiter in shadow. She resisted the urge to raise her fingers to her vizor as the asteroids shone the emerald flood of the recon vessel’s nav lights. A smirk glimmered in contrails of her lips as she saw lambda four’s arbiter pull out of a seven gee bat turn, his shields firing like sparklers, his weapon siren ableat as he pulled back, chastened, to the formation.

Gunda revelled in being a leader of men - it meant she got to delegate the emotions that made her feel small.

“This Commander G.Riehl to Lucy local; tell the navigator he’s getting a too good at cloak rendezvous. Fresh-heads get skittish. Tend to shit themselves when small towns materialise off port.”

The vessel hung against the infinite, recursive desert of asteroids like a massive spectral dagger, basking in the halo of its propulsion gas as it reversed, haloed in plasma. It was dissimilar enough from the Union’s usual aesthetics to make Gunda fidget. Absent were the bullish, prominent plates, the wolfish, triangular bows of most Unioner vessels, designed to deflect debris and gunfire alike. Gone was the confident keel, the prominent propulsion section, the flying bridges, the naked, sinuous tells of a vessel Instead, the vessel hunched. Where there should be silver, it shone a pearlescent, ceramic white. Where there should be a magazine, there was a house-sized sensor dish. Most criminal; there were too many windows. It stunk of a vessel that did not expect to be shot, a prey animal, and at that, Gunda sniffed.

When did we start naming our ships after Goetic demons?


“Lucifuge to Lambda One. Maintain current distance in manual flight. Engage cruise engines and and roll automatic ECM.”

Preternaturally, the Lucifuge’s engines redshifted, and Riehl’s thrusters flashed white inside her wake. Tabbing off her comm unit, she kicked the levers with her feet, pushing back into the couch as the gees led her by the lungs. She realised with some cynicism they’d cruised on her mid-transmission.

“Lambda wing, follow package in cruise, stick to three vee, one kilo distance.” One kilo. That was eight hundred metres further than the Lucy’s CO would have her push. Fuck ‘em.

Riehl pressed her visored eyes to the photons speeding down the velocity vector and watched her potato, in real time, grow to fill the screen.

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[Arno Schultzky]

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Subject: Garen VonHimmel

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Garen, slumped against the wall of his chamber, attempted to scratch his face.

A clong of steel on steel, a slight reverberation in the ears, and the itch remained.

Mask. Of course.

"I am not an illegitimate prince" The Arbeitsdirektor swore, dropping his iron mask aside. He called an aid. A robotic one - dull and stupid. No ambition. He and Garen were the best of friends.

He grabbed the gleaming faceplate by the brow and thrust his death mask into the mandibles of the manservant. “Get it away from me.” The droid genuflected, spun on its ball, and rolled rapidly out the room.

The droid. The droid. Garen suspected that he never saw the same droid twice. He had stopped articulating as much since they’d started rolling in with the same serial numbers, the same memories of old, forgotten conversations, the same harmless fawning. Once, he’d cornered a model and licked it. The paint was fresh. They sent him a model baked in a kiln. He’d started marking pen tallies on the robot’s back, and once they realised the number never exceeded one they sent him back stencilled duplicates. It took him to write “The Arbeitsdirektor is a neophyte” for the cycle to break.

Now? They cycled the older models. Garen understood why they did it, of course. All it would have taken was someone with the slightest knowledge of polymorphic programming - not an uncommon skillset in a society entirely made out of engineers - and Garen would be pulped flesh against the pressure walls.

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[Typrop]

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Subject: Otto Baumann

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Rocks.
Rocks, rocks, and more fragging rocks. This is what Frankfurt, and the VWA's turf has to offer? Rocks? At least Speyer's nebula home looked interesting and dynamic, with yellows and oranges in a constant, lightning-infused maelstrom. Here, you just have rocks, and planet rejects flitting about in front of your cockpit, all the while you hear the Lucifuge's comms going on about some 'Elf King,' a poem. At least the person who decided to blare it over comms, likely our glorious Arbeitsdirektor Garen, has some taste. Despite lacking the sheer presence Gunn has.

Then, a brief flash. Lucifuge's been hit hard. Likely went too close to a VWA installation.

He could see an Order vessel on scans, Yeggito Kebok. Likely doing recon work. Otto fires off a countermeasure, to test his munitions count.

It went click. No countermeasure.

The pilot brings up a display of what munitions his Solidaritat had.


Absolutely nothing. Literally, zilch, zero, nothing, nada, so much nothing that it was like he completely forgot to load them in. Oh wait. He did.

Telling squad lead, that being Gunn, was promptly told to resupply.

And then came the kicker. Three VWA snubs on scans. Panic set in, as the pilot frantically engaged cruise, managing to slam into the button that also launches a cruise disruptor. Thank God and the flaming wheel-angels that he was out, for that one.

"I swear on my seven dead relatives, I did not sign up for this."

Then, the vessel came lurching back to impulse speed, nearly causing Otto to slam his currently flight-masked face into the parts of the ship that tend to be useful, like the navmap display.

One of the populist lefties mentioned something about dueling the bomber. Has to be better than getting slammed by three, though, still a dreary proposition. After all, great at hitting the broad side of a gunboat, not so much a Sabre. Lack of experience was the first thing to bite Otto as he reared to fight, putting up a false display of confidence to mask the under-equipped bomber pilot currently regretting his lack of mines, countermeasures, and cruise disruptors.

Cue the duel, it was actually fairly close, well, about as close as a well-armed Sabre against an under-equipped, all-EMP gun-toting Solidaritat, with an antimatter cannon being the only thing to ruin hulls could get. He got outmaneuvered, missed several shots with the antimatter cannon, and finally he hit the eject button just as the last shot hit the viewport, ruining the piece of Unioner ship design.

Hours later, a friendly patrol arrived, finally. The escape pod was tractored, as everyone silently made their rounds, and returned for Speyer.

The bomber pilot, now slightly wiser, mentally jots down:

"Next time, buy some flipping munitions."

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User was banned for: They will know.
Time left: (Permanent)

[Enkidu]

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Subject: Gunda Riehl

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Gunda really didn’t want to live like this.

You couldn’t live to be a harass without a touch of embitterment - and bitterness lay everywhere. From the etching of her copilot’s face, to the touch of silica from the air from fighters that’d spent most of their service lives plunging through flying grit and nobody had bothered to clean them up to make them presentable enough for closed circuit life support. Everybody on the station was living on borrowed time, playing chess with the cancer.

There was nothing decidedly worse about Wedel than any other pirate base in the sector, apart from the fact it -looked- worse, which accounted for 90% of its psyche. It looked intentionally, depressingly, derelict - a shabbiness that bordered on and pitched over on occasions fine ridge of structural collapse. People were selling good-luck charms to warn explosive decompression away - as if a one-inch carved lump of mineralised bauxite would plug the void between the half-life of existence and the colours of the open universe.

“Oai, jackass! You’re dropping live munitions, you prick. You want that bloody proximity cap barrel crash in the chamber, get my arse filled with shrapnel at point two light so I get spagettified all over subspace with an ejector seat rammed up my ass cavity? Make an attempt to look frickin’ alive, pig.” She bawled, slapping her half-conscious crew tech to the floor. “”Get up.” Nesrin snarled, foot-massaging his kidneys.

Everything is going to the dogs. But it had been for centuries, long before the Union took up the place and kept he station immaculately frozen in time - rotting, but not quite rotten enough. Over time, the delusion would fail. Federal officers would figure out the long con and then they’d all be foisted out into the vacuum to die amidst the nothingness. El perfecto.

They were skittish enough. Far too skittish to be hauling nuclear ordinance around a pressure vessel, steadily oxidising under its own atmospheric layer and the sweat of its occupants. Far too skittish for phantoms and freaks.

Which was why the ‘ghost ship’ rumour had pushed Riehl off the brink. The crapometer had overloaded and everyone was eating up the overspill. Especially this man. Especially the person who was going to load pre-primed munitions into a square metre box directly under her fighter’s control position.

Ghost ships my arse. The myth had got nuttier with elaboration, with hand-around. First part, the ship got so much longer every time it was described, you’d think the rumour purveyors were comparing schlongs. Then you got people with the real sense of the mysterious, taking it overboard as only a Unioner could; the ship was shaped like a sword. Morons.

Nesrin screwed on her flight helmet, scampered up the ramp, as the station’s proximity klaxon put everyone’s adrenal system through destructive testing.

No time for phantoms, when you’re hunting for wraiths.

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[kenshin156]

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Subject: Richard Riedler

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Muffled grunts, boots on metal flooring, the occasional sizzle of a slightly malfunctioning lamp and an incredible echo was all what was heard before things got ugly.
Richard Riedler was carrying a body, a bag over the head, arms and legs tied together, stepping through the large hall towards a dirty, old, wooden chair where he dropped the body. He untied the body's legs and arms, only to tie them again on the arms and legs of the chair. He then cracked his knuckles and took a deep breath...

Then he removed the bag.

Beneath it was an officer of the Marineintelligenz, panickingly scouting the hall with his eyes, but it was so huge, there was nothing to be seen, except growing darkness, and the sternly man standing in front of him, holding the bag he had on his head mere seconds before.

"What is this?! Who are you? Untie me or you'll regret the day you were geboren!"

Without a flinch, a blink, or an extra breath, the man calmly, but threateningly spoke
"You're not in the position to voice demands. If anything, you may beg for mercy."

With false confidence - almost cockiness - the tied man scoffed
"Beg for mercy? A filthy Unioner like you? You should be begging to kiss my-"

That's when his obtrusive voice was replaced with screams of anguish.
Richard Riedler broke his nose with one punch, as if it was determined to reach through his skull.

"I will only tell you once more, before I will leave you in pain for longer than just a broken nose. Halt dein Maul"

Still grunting in pain, heavily breathing, the officer asked inbetween breaths. "What do you want, Unioner?!"

"Answers, mein Freund..." he said, slowly and threateningly circling him, like a lion its prey.

"I'm not your Freund, Unioner! Nothing you can do will change that!"

"Oh, believe me..." he said, while grabbing his neck from behind, squeezing it moderately
"Either you will talk to me like I was your Freund, or you're dead before you know it..."
He clenched his hands, cutting off the airflow. "Am I understood?" he said, before letting go again.

Coughing and gasping for air, he replied "Y-yes... Alright... Ich verstehe..."
His confidence was gone, his legs shaking as much as they could, being tied to the chair.

"Good." he simply said, circling back in front of him, grabbing his chin and pulling it up to look him in the eyes
"Now you better tell me ab-"
He stopped, as the Officer spat a mix of blood and spit into Richard's face

"You think a bit of violence will make me talk? I've been trained under the Marine. I can withstand weeks and months of torture. My body may break, but I will never tell you, what you want!"

Richard wiped the filth off of his face, slowly and deeply breathing
"So you are an actor. I was genuinely convinced you were about to piss your pants already..."
He grabbed his face, pushing his fingers into his jaw with much strength
"Believe me, you just did me a favor.. I'm going to enjoy making you suffer..."
As his fingers slowly buried into the Offizier's jaw, it slightly crackled, him grunting in pain before Richard let go again.

Moving around his jaw to relieve some of the pain, the Offizier started talking again, trying to taunt him.
"Is that all you have? Even the instructors were better, and they went easy on us am ersten Tag!"

Richard simply chuckled slightly, turning around and taking a few steps away from him.
"You know... I could break you in a few minutes... Maybe even in a few seconds..."
He then quickly turned around, swinging his Stahlkappenstiefel to his shin, making it snap, leaving the officer to his pain. Richard Riedler kneeled down, to look into his face.
"But given the circumstances, and the fact that I basically lost what I cared about most because of you - my family - I'm going to take my time and enjoy every second of it."

Anguishing grunts were all that left the Officer's mouth, followed by one sentence that would determine his fate.
"I hope they suffered..."

Richards calm expression shifted. His eyebrows dropped, his pupils became large and he grinded his teeth.
"You've just lost all rights to mercy now, Drecksau!" he said, as he pulled a short knife from his ankle, jamming it into the Offizier's broken shin and turning it 90° to keep the wound open.
"I'm going to prepare you for your demise, and I will take all the time I need. This is not about information anymore, du Made..."
He grabbed a Bunsenbrenner that was hidden behind a pillar, heating another knife from his pocket.
"This has become personal...."

What followed were hours of pain, broken limbs, stab wounds and cuts, before the Offizier succumbed to Richard Riedler's procedure.

Stepping away into the darkness, wiping his hands from the officer's blood, Richard called Gunda Riehl.

"Frau Riehl. We got what we need. He can be disposed of. No, no resistance."
He ended the call, stopping and looking back at the lifeless body, spitting in its direction.
"Not anymore..."

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