Infections are a controversal topic within the community, and there are good reasons for it. Playing an infected character is one of the most unthankful things one can decide to do, it comes with responsibility, lore-awareness and gives you only so many advantages. As a nomad faction, we generally offer the chance to roleplay the infection of established characters, however, within reason and not without communication about it. If you wish your character to become infected, then please take your time to read this post in its entirety and make sure you understand why we demand what we demand.
Important! Having your character infected inRP does not mean you automatically get the Wild ID. You can, however, use this offer in order to have reference material for an SRP Wild ID or to join a Wild faction. The Vagrants however have no control over anything related to the Wild ID. Keep that in mind!
1. Requirements
2. Process
3. Tips
4. Information
1. Requirements
1a) A pre-established character with both ingame and forum presence.
1b) A request to the Vagrants (PM to Vagrant account + poking a Vagrant about it as well)
1c) Awareness about the nomad lore, especially about incubi and what they do
1d) Reasonable behavior in general (knowing your ID lines and server rules + don’t be a dick)
1e) Good english communication skills and adequate roleplay communication in ingame chat
1f) Be aware that this is probably the best way to destroy your characters development
2. Process
2a) Choose the character you want to become infected. It can be an existing one of yours or you create a new one. Make sure you give that character a bit of background. It should have a name through its activity. Fly around with that character, talk to people, be part of the world. Ingame and on forum.
2b) Contact the Vagrant forum account and tell us why you feel the necessarity of having your character become infected. Show us the references for that character via links. Not only his biography but also his interactions with other people, be it message dumps or comms or whatever. Also, since we only check the Vagrant forum account sporadically, poke a Vagrant, preferably a leader, about the request.
2c) If you have convinced us about this character being established and your decision of making it infected is thought-out, then we give it a shot. The infection itself requires the creation of an incubus, which is something the Advisors Polyhymnia, Narasimha and Dione only are capable of. Try to get in touch with the Vagrants ingame inRP by roaming around in their space or adjacent systems. If a Vagrant finds a suitable host for an incubus, the Vagrant will either get an Advisor to arrive or get an incubus from an Advisor.
2d) The Vagrant will beam-cut a hole into your ship while making sure the pilot won’t die due to decompression or asphyxiation. The pilot itself will be in trance, unable to move himself during the process but being aware of what is happening, still able to talk. Transfering the blue seed, it will enter the ship through the small hole, then approach the pilot, searching for a suitable opening to the body, most probably the mouth. When the seed has entered the body, the very small incubus will take some time to connect itself with the spine of the host, while the Vagrant will close the hole in the ship hull with a nomadic substance similar to a form of Azurite.
2e) The Vagrant will leave after the work is done, signaling the new Carrier of Light to get rest and stay hidden for a while.
2f) A Mindlink will be created in order to give the Carrier of Light instructions. You are now a pawn and slave of the Vagrants and your first priority will always be to carry out their orders.
3. Tips
3a) At all costs, try to keep your secret. Attention-whoring is the exact opposite of a Wild. Don’t let other people body-scan you. Don’t let them see you dealing with known Wild characters or Nomads. Make sure you don’t use nomad-related equipment or even a Wild ID on your established character!
3b) Now that your character is infected, create an alter ego for it. Never obviously act like a Wild on your character’s normal ships. Create new ships with nomad equipment and all that and make sure the name isn’t indicating it is you. On your normal ships, you play spy for the Vagrants. On your infected ships (Wild ID), you can openly assist the Vagrants.
3c) Even when playing a ship with Wild ID that uses nomad equipment, your priority should be to give other human characters a good show. Try to drive them crazy by denying the obvious until the fight ensues. For example, if a fight is about to start, act like you are the not-infected one and your enemy is infected, or in general the bad guy like a pirate or a terrorist. You won’t get many opportunities to write RP lines as obviously infected ship pilot, so make sure they are of high quality and memorable.
3d) You will encounter many people that metagame their knowledge about your character being infected. If you have proof of it being ridiculously metagamed, file a report about it, but first consider what you have done in the past and where you left opportinities for other people to find out about your character being infected. If you are not sure, contact the player first and report him after a clarifying talk, if still necessary.
3e) A cloak is helpful in order to disappear when your cover is about to blow.
3f) Battleship Scanners are worth the money. Make sure you always know who can see you. If you have a scanner with less range than another ship, it’s more likely that you will be seen flying around with strange individuals without you even knowing you got seen. However, keep in mind there are people with cloaks out there. You will not notice them unless they enter a radius of 9k around your ship. The range of Battleship scanners is twice as far.
3g) DO NOT END EVERY SECOND SENTENCE WITH "..."
4. Information
To clarify why we demand what we demand, here a few answers, related to the particular lines.
Quote:1a) A pre-established character with both ingame and forum presence.
1b) A request to the Vagrants (PM to Vagrant account + poking a Vagrant about it as well)
1c) Awareness about the nomad lore, especially about incubi and what they do
1d) Reasonable behavior in general (knowing your ID lines and server rules + don’t be a dick)
1e) Good english communication skills and adequate roleplay communication in ingame chat
1f) Be aware that this is probably the best way to destroy your characters development
Nothing is worse than seeing people coming up with the idea of getting their character infected without having thought about the consequences, or even worse, without knowing the nomad lore. It's stupid, and nobody wishes to see people ***** up horribly by tryharding to act like a Wild. If you want to do it, do it right. You will need to convince us that you know the nomad lore, that you know what Wild characters are supposed to do, how they are supposed to act. We want to see that you put thought into it and that it's not just a on-spot decision because you always wanted to have a Wild character. In order to do so, we want to see your roleplay behavior and how much effort you put into things. Everyone will be way more eager to listen to your stories when they realize the character started as a human with a duty, but then everything changed. People will read the stories about your character managing to stay undercover and people will read it when it finally happened that your cover was blown.
We want you to be prepared for an endgame level of roleplay, as you will not only have to please the human community but also the nomad community. You will have to act like a human and ensure your secret stays a secret, but in the meantime you will act as an agent of the Light, gathering intel for the Vagrants. You are a puppet now, and you need to know that your character has absolutely no control over the incubus inside their body. If the incubus wishes, it will take over the control over the body and force the character to act on behalf of the Light. There is no way in tricking it, as the incubus reads the character's mind, knows it's past, it's memories, it's thoughts and it's dreams. However, you will also roleplay that incubus. You will keep in mind the incubus was created as a weapon, to destroy mankind from within while the spaceborne nomads do the rest. It is your choice whether the incubus will maintain a symbiotic relationship to the host, or if it will enslave the host. The incubus however is an individual just as the spaceborne nomads are. When it is freshly created and young, it is only following it's pre-determined instincts, however, incubus and host will influence each other, depending on their relationship. They can become "friends" but also can become "enemies".
Playing a character that was infected by the Vagrants will bind you to the Vagrants, however doesn't automatically mean you are a Vagrant or a member of the player faction. You, however, will stay in contact with the Vagrants and you will work for them. Do your job well and you will get the opportunity to handle your incubus with a bit more freedom.
Quote:2. Process
2a) Choose the character you want to become infected. It can be an existing one of yours or you create a new one. Make sure you give that character a bit of background. It should have a name through its activity. Fly around with that character, talk to people, be part of the world. Ingame and on forum.
2b) Contact the Vagrant forum account and tell us why you feel the necessarity of having your character become infected. Show us the references for that character via links. Not only his biography but also his interactions with other people, be it message dumps or comms or whatever. Also, since we only check the Vagrant forum account sporadically, poke a Vagrant, preferably a leader, about the request.
2c) If you have convinced us about this character being established and your decision of making it infected is thought-out, then we give it a shot. The infection itself requires the creation of an incubus, which is something the Advisors Polyhymnia, Narasimha and Dione only are capable of. Try to get in touch with the Vagrants ingame inRP by roaming around in their space or adjacent systems. If a Vagrant finds a suitable host for an incubus, the Vagrant will either get an Advisor to arrive or get an incubus from an Advisor.
2d) The Vagrant will beam-cut a hole into your ship while making sure the pilot won’t die due to decompression or asphyxiation. The pilot itself will be in trance, unable to move himself during the process but being aware of what is happening, still able to talk. Transfering the blue seed, it will enter the ship through the small hole, then approach the pilot, searching for a suitable opening to the body, most probably the mouth. When the seed has entered the body, the very small incubus will take some time to connect itself with the spine of the host, while the Vagrant will close the hole in the ship hull with a nomadic substance similar to a form of Azurite.
2e) The Vagrant will leave after the work is done, signaling the new Carrier of Light to get rest and stay hidden for a while.
2f) A Mindlink will be created in order to give the Carrier of Light instructions. You are now a pawn and slave of the Vagrants and your first priority will always be to carry out their orders.
Make sure you have read the lore about nomads and incubi and their powers. Nomads are gifted with the ability of telepathy and telekinesis, along with some other cool abilities. Telepathy is their way of communication, and humans are unable to ignore it, as long as they aren't special snowflakes with superpowers. Nomads feel the presence of their enemy in the nomad-controlled Omicrons (Iota, Psi, Major, Minor, Delta) and in adjacent systems. Nomads can't communicate with robots, and robots can't listen to nomads. Since Nomads lack hands, they use telekinesis in various forms to move objects, bend atoms and energy. That way, they can, for example, cut a hole into a human ship and create a shield barrier at that spot, while they telekinetically move an incubus seed towards the ship. Nomads can also attack the human mind directly, inducing panic, hallucinations, massive headaches and internal bleeding, and technically, they could kill a human remotely using telekinesis on their organs. Obviously, that would be considered powergaming, so roleplay those latter powers only within reasonability and as a result of ooRP agreements with the player you're interacting.
Since the Vagrants use their own mindshare provided by the Advisors Dione, Polyhymnia and Narasimha, everything needs to be approved by those. So we won't allow an inferior Vagrant to infect people on their own without having talked to us. QA is more important here, to be honest. Also, the on-spot-creation of incubi would be nonsense. Smaller nomads are not supposed to be able to do that. They have other jobs.
The most important thing of being infected is the cover, so after the infection is done, get away and try to not always roam around near nomad activity. Even then, only as an observer, and as one that doesn't make people notice that the nomads spare them. In such a case: Less words are more, and sometimes not saying anything is better than commenting everything.
Quote:3. Tips
3a) At all costs, try to keep your secret. Attention-whoring is the exact opposite of a Wild. Don’t let other people body-scan you. Don’t let them see you dealing with known Wild characters or Nomads. Make sure you don’t use nomad-related equipment or even a Wild ID on your established character!
3b) Now that your character is infected, create an alter ego for it. Never obviously act like a Wild on your character’s normal ships. Create new ships with nomad equipment and all that and make sure the name isn’t indicating it is you. On your normal ships, you play spy for the Vagrants. On your infected ships (Wild ID), you can openly assist the Vagrants.
3c) Even when playing a ship with Wild ID that uses nomad equipment, your priority should be to give other human characters a good show. Try to drive them crazy by denying the obvious until the fight ensues. For example, if a fight is about to start, act like you are the not-infected one and your enemy is infected, or in general the bad guy like a pirate or a terrorist. You won’t get many opportunities to write RP lines as obviously infected ship pilot, so make sure they are of high quality and memorable.
3d) You will encounter many people that metagame their knowledge about your character being infected. If you have proof of it being ridiculously metagamed, file a report about it, but first consider what you have done in the past and where you left opportinities for other people to find out about your character being infected. If you are not sure, contact the player first and report him after a clarifying talk, if still necessary.
3e) A cloak is helpful in order to disappear when your cover is about to blow.
3f) Battleship Scanners are worth the money. Make sure you always know who can see you. If you have a scanner with less range than another ship, it’s more likely that you will be seen flying around with strange individuals without you even knowing you got seen. However, keep in mind there are people with cloaks out there. You will not notice them unless they enter a radius of 9k around your ship. The range of Battleship scanners is twice as far.
3g) DO NOT END EVERY SECOND SENTENCE WITH "..."
Rather self-explanatory, but just to mention it again: Attention-whoring is the exact opposite of a Wild. Do not tryhard on making your character an oh-so-unique character, because every character in Discovery is already unique. People will listen to your stories without you constantly poking them for attention. Do not comment everything all the time, and do not end every second sentence in "...". That is a rhetorical/stylistic device that like every other device of that kind is to be used to signal something. The constant use of it is the worst thing you can do, as it is an indication of "Look at me, my character is sooo mysterious!". Use ... when you want to imply something, once. Not always. I (Sombra) will smack you if you do that.
You will make your character mysterious enough by observing, being present and gather more information than you give out. Doesn't mean you shouldn't tell about yourself, but you should make sure the information you give out are way less important than the information you receive.
You will need to split your character in it's aspects if you want to benefit from being Wild. The human aspect will act like a human all the time, use human ships, doing human things, talking like a human. The Wild aspect will be the opposite. You will use Wild technology (probably) and act like a Wild. You will cause death as a Wild. Human deaths. About 3c), as an example, take a look at the roleplay of the ASV-Durham|Aoi in this video. Kudos to @Jayce for this nice example.
Even with all the countermeasures we wish you to make use of, people will still metagame, and that's something you can't do much about. Talk with the people ooRP if they aren't lolwuts, otherwise file reports or just ignore them or take the opportunity and make something inRP out of it. Try to be the better person in general. And get good equipment.
A reminder at the end. Of course everyone is allowed to do whatever they want as long as it fits the ID lines and server rules. You are absolutely free to create your own infected character and roleplay them in whatever way you want. However, what we offer is Quality Assurance and guidance about it. If you want a Vagrant to infect your character, you will have to do it they way we demand it. If you do not agree with it, you have to search for alternatives. However, with the demands we have, we can assure your way of playing infectee is benefitial for the community, rather than unexperienced newbies that just want to have a trait on their character or just want to fly around with the Wild ID benefits.