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These are just starters for rps I want to get going. Simply let me know if you want to play them or just jump in and reply over pm or email. Pm me to get my email and if you reply to a post put the title of the plot as the subject line.
Under our feet (Steampunk fantasy)
Above Christopher's head, the town was abuzz. It was a small town of maybe 1000 people and on market day, most were outside, chatting it up in the sunshine that flooded the plaza while they inspected the fruit and bread the merchants had brought out. Children nagged for waffles or to go see the steam powered robots Old Sam sold. Long skirts were all the rage on the females, often combined with high necklines on their tops. See through parasols filtered the sunlight coming from above as the house wives dragged along their purchases, shaking their heads at their men who were drinking in the pubs or sneaked drinks from the ale stand on the market.
The "Halls", the network of tunnels under the town, were unknown to anyone but himself. The generation of his grandfather had built it and his father had told him the tales, shown him the maps... As a kid he'd played down here. Every time one of the builders of the city died, his grandfather gathered up all the papers they had about the town's conception. Christopher had never understood why his grandfather had been so secretive. However, he wasn't one to doubt the word of the man that had raised him. With his grandfather, the last of the builders of the town had died. Sticking to the tradition, Christopher had gathered all of the blue prints, data and drawings. He had stashed them underneath the town, in an area he called his second home.
It didn't make sense for a town like this to have huge underground tunnels. It was only after asking his grandfather time and time again that he had found out: the grandfathers of this town had feared a nuclear explosion. "You couldn't say the word "nuclear" out loud back then without causing a panic, so we added it in secret," The silver haired man had told him while cleaning out his pipe. "They're useless now! The Halls are simply a secret now, our secret. We built them to be cherished and used, Christopher, so use and cherish them. If not to evacuate the city, then cherish them as your personal secret."
None of that had really made sense at the time, but the seventeen year old had nodded. Life had gone on after his grandfather's death, but he had never forgotten the Halls even when he told nobody about them. In his spare time he would retreat and work on them, making them accessible from nearly every public place. His secret? Steam powered hatches that lay underneath a pit of sinking sand. You had to stand in a specific spot, let the sand suck you down, then press the button to make the hatch open just enough to squeeze through. If you walked over it or hesitated a second, it didn't work and felt like a patch of soft ground. He positioned his portals in sheds, underneath hedges, fenced off areas and and the dark nooks and crannies of parking lots. Within seconds, he could disappear from the face of the town.
But the portals weren't the only thing he had altered. The Halls themselves had been reinforced slowly but surely, and he had made the central meeting point of all the tunnels into a homey area. It had a small kitchen, a shower, a bed and a few books. The water was tapped from a few fountains and electricity was just as easy to tap. This was his domain, he knew every part of the Halls, every shadow.
Then it happened. Christopher remembered well: He had spent three days in the Halls fixing up a leak that had threatened to flood the whole structure and when he came up, a murder had been committed. Christopher hadn't had an alibi and was the number one suspect at once. However, the town hadn't been so kind to wait for the jury to decide. A lynch mob had gathered and was heading for his house, so he had vanished into the Halls. A few days later, his wife had spoken up and said that he had committed suicide and that he'd left a letter to announce his death.
Like an idiot, Christopher had reacted before thinking it through. He had made an appearance at the town meeting where she announced his death, blew her a kiss, then had run off. Before anyone could even stir, he'd been in the safety of the Halls again. The next few days papers had been abuzz with the "ghost sighting". Nobody could find him, nobody could attest they'd seen him run out of the town. Slowly but surely, however, he started to realise he'd screwed himself over. His wife had spread the rumour to keep him safe - nobody would chase a dead man - and now he'd made himself into an attraction. Whatever paper he could grab talked about him so that slowly but surely, he was starting to become an attraction. People wanted to see the Ghost and know more, they wanted to solve the mystery.
Christopher shivered as he took a cold shower. "Need to get a boiler in here..." He muttered to himself. The water of the fountain was ice cold, and in the winter, it wouldn't be much better. He had never spent that much time around here during the winter. Who in his right mind would stay in a cold catacomb when there was a heated house for him to live in? And Christopher missed that. Hot water, a warm house, a washing machine. Looking around he saw his clothes line filled with drying clothes, the make shift coffee pot on an old kitchen counter, a futon that could really use a new mattress. Besides this, he had nothing left. Leaving town was no real option, the Halls would crumble and be forgotten in the end.
Quickly he dressed in a pair of pants with suspenders and a white shirt. He grabbed his bowler hat and put it on as he made his way down an eastward hall. There, he activated a switch that lifted him up to the hatch, and pushed him through the layers of quick sand. It always took a minute of no air to get through it, but he was used to it. Nobody saw him materialise behind a statue that had only a narrow gap between the statue and a large wall. He slipped out, hat low to cover half his face as he glanced around the stands. Even ghosts had to eat. In one fluent movement, he grabbed a large white bread and tossed a coin into the half asleep merchant's cash register. He hadn't even stopped. How could he stop? He had to keep moving or he'd be noticed... Lots of visitors in the town today... He wondered what was up.
His thoughts couldn't stray, however. He mentally drew a path from the self service meat stand - he definitely felt like some salami - to the fruit and vegetables stand. The stand wasn't really high on the list of priorities. When the market was over, most of the unsold goods were left behind and today didn't seem to be a very good day for vegetables. Christopher paid for some salami and grabbed it without even showing the merchant his face. The man was too distracted by a busty woman next to him to really notice this oddity, however.
Beyond this world (Realistic with fantasy twist)
Seth made his way through the crowded streets of the city he called home. It was busy, it was crowded and it was filled with smells of hot dog stands and coffee shops. Seth loved his coffee, he didn't think he'd survive long without it. Even now he was walking around with a tall cup wrapped in a little purple sleeve he had crocheted himself.
Truth be told, Seth didn't stand out among the masses of people making their way to work. In their eyes he was just an average 20-something with a slightly off taste in clothes: Seth wore dark pants, an unbuttoned wool cardigan, a button up shirt with a hastily tied tie and a lot of Avelian charms, hanging from necklaces and bracelets. He had scruffy brown hair and deep green eyes. With an average build and weight he wasn't exactly model material but there was something about him. Not that he had a girlfriend. Weird things tended to happen around him, scaring people away.
Seth remembered his first visit to Avelia very well. He had seen an angel at his father's funeral - he had been 12. After the service he'd followed the angel and talked to it, learning a lot about where it came from. The angel never told his name so he just called him that - Angel.
Over the years he had made short trips to Avelia until the day he turned 18. Fully knowing what he was doing he had travelled to Avelia and stayed there for two years before coming back He had learned a lot, but when he came back he learned his parents were very upset with his disappearance - they had never believed in Avelia no matter how much he told them about it and they had decided to start sending him into therapy and to try getting him into a higher education of some sort. Seth refused as he felt his future was not here but in Avelia and he did not want to be tied down to this place.
This man was his... third therapist now. He walked into the office, not paying any attention to the receptionist as he was in time for his appointment and disliked the waiting.
"Morning!" He draped his cardigan over the back of the chair and looked up to him. The couch wasn't his thing, he felt weird lying down when others were around."Mind if I crochet during this session? I'm almost done with this wicked pair of Mobius mittens." As he was asking the question he took out a teal ball of wool and a crochet hook. He was a fidgetty one - if he wasn't smoking he was crocheting.
Second Chances
The explosion threw the man clear of the console, and out of the ship. A small Pride 3 ship, it just had room for two occupants. It was the most precise available on the market in the year 4733, which was the apex year to get a spaceship, as the art of time traveling declined soon after. Its design was based on a turtle shell, taking over the shape of it. Teal had ordered it in a bright red colour, which suited it just perfectly, contrasting the dark black porthole on the top and sides. It was also suited for short space trips, and teleported to wherever you needed it to go in time and space. Much like a car battery, it needed to be used in order to keep working.
And that was just what Teal had been doing until the explosion happened. He wasn't sure what had caused it yet, though like any time traveler he was trained to repair his ship from the ground up. That was why spaceships were such expensive things - aside from the time traveling ability, he also received pretty much the whole company's knowledge on the craft.
The government made sure the prices of the ships stayed up - while they didn't ban time traveling, they made it a lot more complicated. Once you bought a spaceship, you didn't exist anymore in that society. You were an outlaw and it was best to leave that time to avoid your ship being stolen or worse. Many still protested the sale of these wondrous vehicles, as one of the main effects included you didn't age the same way anymore. The long term effects hadn't really been studied - after producing a working and stable prototype, the team of scientists devising it had to sell it immediately to avoid bankruptcy, and the company owning it right now only spent money to make the vehicle more stylish.
All in all, the 5th milennium sort of sucked to live in. Teal had decided to take his leave at age 20, preferring being a poor time traveler over the life of a millionaire in the 5th millennium. So he had taken his money, all of it, and had bought himself a Pride 3.
This was the life he enjoyed the most. Right now, however, he sort of wished he'd stayed home and lived like a millionaire. The ship had crashed and while he knew they were somewhere in the 21st century, he had no real clue where. He got up and looked around, his ship smoking from the engine. If he was lucky he just needed a few parts... But there was the rub. It would take him a lot of time to make those parts as they were only available way forward in the 47th century. Well, that was why he was taught such things. He looked around, and dug in his pocket for the remote to the machine. He pressed the button, making it as small as a few inches and feather light, and put it into his pocket before he exited the alley and grabbed a newspaper.
21st century, that was good, and the city... He was right near him! Even better. He couldn't have landed in a better place, honestly. What was that exact date? He noted it mentally, and checked it with a list. "Oh, s**t." He said, looking at the clock.
In exactly ten minutes, someone was going to run a red light, calling on a phone, and hit him.
But not as long as he could stop it. He checked the place and looked up to where he was, ordering his hand held computer to give him the quickest trajectory as he ran. He could make it, just barely make it, as long as he started running now.
Teal didn't know why he followed "him" around. In one of his first trips he'd spotted him and had checked him out in the 50th century edition of all who ever lived. He would have died, there, a year later. But Teal had decided that wouldn't happen, and after that first rescue, he had decided that he was responsible for the life he had saved. But there was one thing that scared him. No matter what he did, wherever of whenever he went, "his" visible records became unreadable to Teal after a certain date.
And that date was today.
This is why he was running like someone was trying to kill him. Teal feared this would be the day, the final day, that he wouldn't be able to save "him". After what seemed to be an eternity of running, he finally rounded the corner into the street, and saw the car. In a final dash he ran up to "him", seeing him cross the street, and pushed him out of the way...
Too late he realized he hadn't gotten far enough. He scrambled up, but too late, he felt the car hit his shin and heard it crack with an awfully ugly noise. But he was safe, so he could lay his head down and sleep some, or pass out. He was sure it was more of the latter, really.
Teal had been named after his eyes. They looked quite extraordinary, and it had been a by process of a vaccine his mother had gotten while pregnant, he'd been told. He wasn't too sure of that, but it was the explanation he'd always gotten. His hair was less extraordinary, just a normal black head of hair with curls, a few inches long and thick. He was rather lean, like the archetypal traveler, thin from being half starved but with a good set of legs on him.
Digging into Reality
Montgomery looked around as he exited the plane. It had taken the man very long to get here, via Japan into the one and only airport Sakhalin had. The airport itself consisted of little more than one runway, one passenger terminal and a few facilities for cargo flights. The whole place looked dreary and near deserted, but it was a rather warm summer's day with temperatures reaching 15°C. Jonathan was perfectly comfortable wearing a button up shirt and a blazer, strolling through the terminal with his baggage pulled behind him. All of his baggage was carry on - he didn't expect to need much more, and whatever he needed he could probably buy here anyway.
To be honest, he wasn't convinced. The legend of Nogliki told that a ghost ship crashed into the beach. Aboard, the villagers found "a Plague, that had ripped through the crewmembers as if they were nothing". Or at least, that was what the translation of old texts said. Frightened to death, the villagers had taken the Plague and buried it deep to be forgotten forever. The most recent theories said it was most likely a hunk of radium that had given the sailors a case of radiation poisoning. Of course, a ghost ship would attract vultures and other carrion eaters and it had been sailing for quite a while before it hit the shore, so that he dismissed the descriptions of the body.
Montgomery didn't really care about the radium... What he hoped to find was something completely different. A part of a ship, a space ship to be exact. Montgomery had been 15 earth years old when he had crashed here... The government had taken him under his wings in exchange for all the information he could give about his species. They'd gobbled up everything he'd given them about his race, the Vhoorlians, from their near immortality to the way they wore their hair. In return he'd had a place to stay, an education, and a lot of help in learning how to fit in with humans.
Though of course, it was only natural he followed up leads like this. All he knew was that the chance of this piece of radium being huge enough to kill a whole crew was very small. A piece of a crashing spaceship would be more likely - it could have burned up the ship, or sprayed acid as a defense mechanism, or a space bacteria no human had a resistance too...
Hell, he could use the piece, get off this planet and check on his family. It had been damn near ten years... At 5"8 with a lean build, Montgomery didn't stand out much. Many of the indicators of his alien status were easily covered up. He was a tall one for his race, which helped look fairly human, and though his eyes were harder to cover up, the government had provided him with special contacts. They covered up the fact he had no pupils and the strange teal colour of his irises.
He moved into the waiting room of the small airport, waiting up for the rest of the crew to join him.
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