Pollution was always a problem, it just wasn’t always this bad. After the governments toppled over and the companies stepped in to help, things went downhill pretty quickly. Hey, at least the human race wasn’t extinct yet. But the pollution gave rise to a whole new set of problems, oxygen masks being needed just to walk around outside, a significant change in temperatures and climates, and organ failures.
Most of humanity was placed in a single city called Aeterna, which became the breeding ground for the companies’ dynastic orders. Companies kept their names pretty simple, probably for easy distinction and self-explanation. EduCo handled distribution of Synapse transmitters, which were pretty much accelerated education devices. FoodCo dealt with all things food, and GenCo powered the generators that kept the lights on. OxyCo provided the masks everyone wore, and sold better masks for higher prices. Of all of the companies, though, the one that seemed like it was doing the nastiest of things was the one people couldn’t really live without.
All the organ failures gave rise to the power of GroCo, a company devoted to, well, growing tube grown men, women, and children popularly known as ‘Sleepers’. Sleepers were raised for the sole purpose of organ transplants for those who needed them, and could pay the price for them.
Of course, that’s how it started.
People started asking if other parts of the sleepers were up for grabs, the eyes, the pearly white skin, muscles… Thus gave birth to the bar classification system. Bar 1’s were children. Bar 2’s were for organs and muscle transplants, but they were still prettier than the average person. It was like perfume, really. The prettier the bottle it was stored in, the more likely someone was going to pick it up, take a sniff, and buy it. The illustrious Bar 3 marking was reserved for absolutely beautiful sleepers, who were used almost entirely for cosmetic purposes and bought only by those who had profited from today’s society, mostly because they were the only ones who could afford it.
It started out as this sort of nasty ‘Why would you even think about doing stuff like that’ system, because it took people a while to realize just how necessary the sleepers were. The more used to it people got, the more commonplace it became.
Sleepers were stored in a relatively well guarded facility, while holographic projections in storefronts and the main GroCo building provided views of all the sleepers, methods of purchase, highlighting what organs were needed, so on, so forth.
These days, the media was more a method of advertisement than a source of real news. Even worse was the realization that GroCo supplied and ran its own private army, calling them ‘Agents’ and often engaging in competition with the other companies. This ‘private army’ was publically a security force, but it was clearly much more.
They also help maintain The Wall, a huge, hulking wall around the entirety of the city that the companies claim is meant to keep the horrors of the mutated outside world out, but really seems more like it’s keeping the people of Aeterna in. According to fairly reliable sources, from nowhere in the city can you see over the top of the wall.
But back to the Sleepers. As for why they were called the sleepers, it was because they never woke up. Throughout the entirety of their tube grown life, a sleeper would be kept under by anesthetics fed in through the biotube. At least, for now. Not everyone was happy with the system, a group of rebels established a base of operations in an abandoned boarding house. They had plans to launch a heist and steal some of the sleepers from their pods, use synapse transmitters, educational devices designed to bring someone up to speed on all the basics usually covered through a physical educational system, and give them a chance at a life they’d never had before.
Hard to say what would happen while they tried to teach people how to make up for decades of life that was slept away.
Character Creation Notes: I’m highly encouraging creativity on this. There are five main companies, GroCo, EduCo, GenCo, FoodCo, and OxyCo. Each one offers a variety of jobs, and I highly recommend looking over the google document (Link at the bottom) which will contain a description of each company and the sorts of jobs that it offers. “But we’re rebels! We don’t need to work for the same people we’re overthrowing!” The rebels need to have some sort of cash inflow, and they can’t just be a bunch of thieves and assassins I’m not saying you have to have a job and can’t just be a ‘Rebel’, but be creative. I’ll be accepting 5-7 characters that I see as working well together and are creatively and well-written. I’ll also be requiring real pictures over graphically designed pictures. I’ll be letting applications sit for a little bit before I accept anyone and ideally start accepting characters around the weekend, say, Friday.
Right now I have a lot of people who are Perceptive and have a Razor Sharp Wit. If everyone has the same strength, it’s going to be a lot harder for me to plan out good challenges, so right now I’m looking for characters with different strengths.
Gameplay Notes: Please write third person. Tense is subject to change based on your writing style, but I’d prefer to keep third person as a constant.
Further Questions: Shoot me an e-mail at aaenil@gmail.com
Google Document: http://tinyurl.com/lxyphjv
Forum Thread: http://tinyurl.com/nxgdrr8
Hosted and narrated by:
Red Suit (Aaeni)
Started 06/29/14.
Scenes played: 2
License: Community License
