Mini-Grand 5101 [Round 3: Xilyon Odyssey]

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

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Loading Mini-Grand Framework... Done.

Generating Administration Personality... Done.

Ooh, hey! This is pretty cool!

Generating Characters... Done.

Four beings suddenly found themselves nowhere, able to see one another but nothing else. A synthesized voice came out of the nothing surrounding them.

"Ooh, thingies! Fighty thingies! Whee! Hey there, thingies!

"Let's see... thingy one's a cool wind spirit called Kekarie! It can do wind stuff!

"Then there's Deathwing! He's pretty much the baddest ass in town, with cybernetic implants up the wazoo! (Maybe even literally?) He can fly and shoot lasers and be generally neato.

"Ooh, a Bartleby! This guy's Bartleby Miller, and if he dies, he just comes right back! If he doesn't die every hour or two, though he dies for real! ...I'm confused now.

"Whatever! This last one is Nathan Xander, but he's got a cooler name he'll tell you about if you ask him. (And maybe you can get an autograph! Oh, that'd be awesome!) He's basically a cool-famous-kickass video game person!"

Generating Setting... Done.

The four generated characters suddenly found themselves moved, scattered in various locations around what looked to be a rather well-appointed cruise ship.

"Check it out, thingies, you're on a ship! It's called Titanous or something, and it's pretty big! The guys who made it were all 'pff, you can't sink it, losers.' You should totally prove them wrong or something!

"Oh right, I forgot! You don't even know why you're here! You're all supposed to fight, yeah! As soon as one of you dies, you'll move somewhere different, and that'll keep happening until there's just one of you left! Isn't that awesome?! Have fun!"

(Characters:)

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SpoilerSolaris: Kekarie (#B2A807)
Lankie: Deathwing (#00BFFF)
Ixcalibur: Bartleby Miller (#A0522D)
BlastYoBoots: Nathan "nateXtrem" Xander (#224B07)

Username: Solaris
Name: Kekarie
Gender: None, but I guess it would answer to male.
Race: Ancient Wind Spirit, birdlike, created at the beginning of the universe, as far as it knows, the only one of it's kind.
Colour: Pretty Dark Yellow that is Hex code #B2A807
Biography: After the creation of the universe, this creature was whisked into existence by a god. Its job was to just protect the forest, and that was a pretty easy job. At the time, there wasn't really anything threatening around (to the forest as large at least), so it had a nice time just hanging out in the forest, talking to plants and animals, and not really having to deal with anything that was sentient enough to disturb the natural order of things. So, one day, it just fell asleep... for a few thousand years.
When it woke up it was thoroughly confused, didn't really know what to do with itself, until it was led to some village of humans by some nice trees. At first they were deathly afraid, but one village elder knew of the Wind Spirit's legend, told it its own name, and begged for help with the loggers that were about to destroy the forest. Remembering its purpose, it set off do just that, albeit in an indirect way.
Unfortunately, this led to tragedy, when in a fit of unjustified rage, the loggers set the forest near the village on fire while they worked on another side of it. Kekarie was similarly enraged, and for the first time in it's entire life it flipped out, leaving the workers scarred and injured and completely unable to remember what had happened. The following morning, the villagers tried to find the wind spirit, but it was gone.

Description: Standing at some five feet, the birdlike spirit has a feathered, blue and green torso with some rougher magenta legs. Its feet each have three, powerful clawed toes. It also has a small pair of magenta wings, only slightly large enough to wrap around his body. From the neck up is his orange, beaked head, which also lacks feathers. Finally, its most odd limb is his large, yellow, prehensile tail, which has five clawed, humanoid fingers at the end.
Personality wise, Kekarie’s a bit of a prankster. Likes to juggle with the tail, enjoys speaking with plants, animals, and children. It likes attention from the younger ones very much. It cares for the forest and lives to protect it, but for the most part prefers to go about its business in a lazy way, because for the time that its been active, it didn't really have to do much. It acts a bit dumber than it lets on, and it doesn't speak at all unless absolutely necessary. However, if it gets enraged enough, it will show it's full god granted elemental power.

Items/Abilities: Being a wind spirit, it does not require food or drink, but greatly enjoys fruit and various liquids. Its beak and claws can pierce and rip apart moderately hard objects, while its tail-hand can only scratch or carve at things. However, it can easily wield weapons with little difficulty, and is easily maneuverable and strong, capable of suspending the rest of the body with ease. It has extraordinarily good balance, and a sixth sense for falling objects. It also can spit out compressed wind bullets of varying power, ranging from enough to knock a hat off, to piercing a bulldozer. While it has a great control of wind, unless severely aggravated, it prefers to limit itself to only passive wind control to increase speed and jumping ability, with the exception of his wind bullets.

Username: Lankie
Name: Deathwing (also known as Claus Everett)
Gender: Male
Race: Human/Cyborg
Colour 'deepskyblue' according to tags

Biography: Since a young age, Claus had been involved in war. His homelands belonged to a vast, technologically advanced empire with a ruthless conscript programme. Children as young as 12 would be collected and 'upgraded' into cybernetic soldiers, to further push the machine empires wish of global domination into a reality.

Unlike most others of his age, Claus revelled in the idea of becoming a soldier and welcomed the gruesome transformation with open arms. His enthusiasm continued in his days of a soldier, showing a natural talent for warfare and murder. He managed to out live the vast majority of average conscripts by years and loved every minute of it. It wasn't until 13 years later would his commanding officers would take notice of Claus' talents.

Claus was granted an audience with the Eternal Emperor himself and offered the long due promotion to 'Vanguard', the Emperors elite squadron of unstoppable knights. Naturally, Claus accepted straight away. His standard cyborg implementations were stripped away and replaced with something much more befitting the emperors personal guard; advanced shielding, the deadliest weaponry and grand metallic wings. Claus abandoned his name for something more befitting his terrifying appearance.

And so the scourge of the skies, Deathwing, was born.

Description: Deathwing complexion is sickly white with jet black hair, his left eye a dull grey, while his other replaced with a cold, metallic construct with a single, piercing blue light. Both arms have been replaced with robotic limbs, his left arm bears only a large cannon to fire destructive energy bolts. His legs remain intact, albeit clad in gadget riddled boots. A large glowing core is embossed into Deathwing's chest, hidden by a large cloak. Deathwing sports six huge, metallic wings upon his back, skeletal in shape; they serve as extensions of Deathwing's body and may freely move them as if an arm. On his back there is a slender cast of metal which acts as a jet pack.

Deathwing is a demented being, taking a grand amount of pleasure in the pain and suffering of others. Despite his skill as a killer, he is in actuality quite the moron, he was never really suited to his general like position and prefers a simple 'fragfest' to complex tactics. He is most definitely an advocate of brute strength, overpowering his enemies with unrelenting firepower. Should things not go his way he is quick to become irritated and even more stupid. Despite his violent tendencies, he quite the talkative fellow, and loves a good old fashioned monologue when the chance presents itself.

Items/Abilities: Despite being named 'Deathwing', his wings are in fact, mostly aesthetic, they are far too thin for actual flight. His airborne ability comes from a jet pack attached to his back, allowing him quick and controlled flight with relative ease. That is not to say the wings aren’t completely useless, Deathwing can manoeuvre them as an effective stabbing weapon if needs be.

Deathwing's main weapon is the 'death cannon' which is his left arm. This huge gun fires globes of pure energy which explode violently on impact. The rate of fire of the cannon is impressively fast, ensuring swift, immediate destruction at any time. Unfortunately, such a powerful weapon has a drawback; it overheats spectacularly fast, Deathwing could only fire a volley six or seven blasts before the cannon would effectively burst into flames. Cool down generally lasts about three or four minutes.

Deathwing's general cybernetic implants provide him with the stamina, strength and speed of 3 men put into one. However should his core get severely damaged enough, his implants and life support would shut down, followed by his death in about 5 minutes.

Username: Ixcaliber
Name: Bartleby Miller
Gender: Male
Race: Flux

The Flux are an alien race whose DNA is incredibly unstable. This instability manifests itself upon the point of death wherein their entire body will be rebuilt from scratch and they will be fine. Most Flux are because of this effectively immortal, the only things that can kill them being the complete destruction of their body or old age. When their body rebuilds itself it seldom looks anything like how it started, varying incredibly from one incarnation to the next. Each individual Flux has markers that remain constant from one incarnation to the next, identifiers that enable other Flux to tell one another apart. As a species they have a very relaxed attitude to death, and a very low murder rate.

Colour: Whatever this colour is. Brown i guess.
Biography: Bartleby is unique amongst his race, his DNA being even more unstable than that of his peers. It possesses the unique quality that it does not wait for death to begin rebuilding his body. Allowing this to happen would cause him to rapidly disintegrate until all that was left of his body was an unsightly mush. The only way to prevent this process is to die regularly, at least once every hour and a half. Various Flux scientists have been working on a way of stabilising his DNA for years, and were in fact approaching a major breakthrough before Bartleby was taken off to be part of a Grand Battle.

Description: The one constant throughout Bartleby’s many forms is that his hair (or fur) is always strawberry blonde, and his skin pale white. At the time that he was taken Bartleby was relatively humanoid; the only real difference being that he had an extra pair of arms, composite eyes taking up half the size of his face, nostrils but no nose, and mandibles. He is about nineteen years old. He typically wears t-shirts and jeans, or whatever the equivalent of this is for the species that he is, as these are easy simple clothes that he can just pull on after regenerating.
Due to his condition Bartleby no longer fears death, and can actually be quite brave when he wants to be. He is somewhat reckless because his life is kind of shit and he doesn’t really have much incentive to keep hold of it, though he would not give it up voluntarily. He is always kind of rude and ill-tempered because he does not get much sleep because he has to get up every two hours to kill himself.

Items/Abilities: As noted above when he dies he regenerates into another form. He carries with him a backpack full of clothing appropriate for the forms he seems to regenerate into most often, and a knife for emergency suicides. He was not chosen for his fighting skills but for the fact that he is hard to kill. Well hard to kill and make stay dead at any rate.

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Spoiler:mspa:

Username: BlastYoBoots
Name: Nathan Gabriel Xander ("nateXtrem")
Gender: Male
Race: Human

Colour: #224B07

Description: Tall 23-year-old Caucasian male, with semi-athletic build and a round chin. Short black spiky hair, and pink eyes (via nano-dye augmentation when he was 15; purely aesthetic). Wearing a black "GDC '87" t-shirt with a holographic (3D) print of the GDC mascot on the back, a rounded polygonal figure with an upside-down impossible triangle for a head. Also wearing camo cargo pants and a GDC '87 pin shaped like a small, black flying saucer, which has been secretly outfitted with a tiny camera.

Amiable and prone to humor; crowd-pleaser. Loves his job and appreciates his fans; will often sacrifice revenue or break the occasional non-disclosure contract for an occasion to feed his hungry fanbase. In video-games, quite competitive and a completionist. Has a strong appreciation for game design, especially visual and story-wise; knows every video game trope like the back of his hand.

Items/Equipment: Wielding a replica H&K MG 9 ultralight machine gun / automatic rifle, with toggled laser sight, ultra-long-range scope, and nano-reloaded 80-bullet capacity, among other fixings. Not that it needs it, seeing as it is only built to fire an unlimited supply of blanks. Has a similarly modern laser-sighted pistol sidearm at his belt, firing similar blanks. Both look, sound, and fire blanks identically to the originals, save at a reduced volume to avoid any chance of hearing loss by the user (esp. in small quarters). Also at his side is an exact replica serrated combat knife from "Call of Duty 12", engraved "nateXtrem"; it is real, and deadly sharp. The GDC pin mentioned above has a hidden camera Nate installed to avoid screening by the Xilyon Odyssey alpha staff; as a low-power miniature camera, it is only capable of taking 52-Gpx still 3D images, able to display them back on a deployable, floating hardlight-nanomesh display when necessary.

Skills: Expert marksman, through years of competitive VR practice and otherwise. Skilled with a combat knife, through similar means. Moderately athletic, but exceptional at twitch-reactions and dodging, as well as sensing his immediate environment for threats while moving quickly/silently. Basically, a pro-gamer. His PR experience and contract negotiations have also given him a light degree of prowess at social manipulation.

Biography:

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Spoiler"No phones, no wires, no radio, maxfi, or medialink signals; yes, Mister Xander, even your biolink headset and micro-wallet need to go. We can't trust a non-disclosure agreement alone, given your 'history'."

Nathan and the CEO of Matrix VR-ware had a mutual laugh at his air quotes, here, as he was being stripped of his belongings in a deep back room of the 2087 Game Developers' Conference. "Yeah, I understand. It's just, you know, with 120 million blog followers, it can be-"

"Hard to resist the temptation, yes. Especially given the... uniqueness of what we're about to show you." Uniqueness indeed. Matrix VR had released hit after monumental hit since 2063, when they unexpectedly received the rights to resurrect the long-dead "Call of Duty" franchise in a virtual reality game. Contrary to everyone's expectations, they truly knocked it out of the park, and have been topping themselves in leaps and bounds ever since. Most unique was their hardware; their experts insisted on custom-tooling the usual VR-sphere hardware, bringing hardlight-nanomesh graphics and sensory-feedback to their most detailed level yet. Their latest game, cryptically codenamed "Xilyon Odyssey", was a total mystery. They'd teamed up with Bandolier Studios, home to some of the best story-writers and procedural-generation experts in the dev business, and then proceeded to spend trillions of credits on this project while keeping everything on a total lockdown. All they said was that it was bound to "redefine gaming" as never before... and most in the know believed them.

Nathan would be the first outsider to see it.

Virtual Reality - forcing participants to compete physically, not just with a rudimentary interface - had turned pro-gaming into a mainstream-channel sport, and Nathan had been swept to the top. His tournament wins and online commentary had made him the go-to source for fans of VR shooters and RPGs. He was even offered star movie roles on multiple occasions, but turned them down, of course. Can't disappoint the fans by being away for filming that long, even if he documented it.

"You think we're impressive?!" the CEO had joked with him, earlier. "You single-handedly brought back pink eyes. I'd be lucky to accomplish something so amazing in a lifetime!"

Matrix was counting on Nathan's exclusive look to kickstart promotion of the game, generating hype to keep their stock up and competitors at bay. As far as they knew, Nathan would give an exclusive multicast on it, after the demo; no visuals, no in-game sound, nothing but his personal account of his impression of Xilyon Odyssey. Little did they know that his GDC pin was a fake, smuggled days before the show and outfitted by a trusted friend with a state-of-the-art miniature camera, perfect for capturing the game's look and feel. Nate hated to do this to a company he loved, but, well... what the fans demand...

He was handed his VR-linked gun replica and sidearm; both rather current weapons, he thought, giving him an idea of the game's setting. "Oh, and I almost forgot," chimed in the CEO, who then made a show of presenting back the knife they'd taken from him at screening. It was the custom-engraved reward he'd received as a teenager, having won his first championship at a Matrix-sponsored global VR tournament; he never took it off his person. "That's right: you can use it in-game. As long as you don't throw it, that is; while it's on your person, there's no danger of damaging the VR-sphere with your swings, even if you embed it in the ground next to you."

"Just remember, Nathan. This exclusive preview only lasts as long as you stay alive. At your first death, we'll shut it down and escort you out. Prepare yourself... this will be unlike any game you have yet experienced."

"I'm ready."

Everything had gone as-planned, or so the CEO thought at first. Nathan walked into the large, custom VR sphere his company had lifted in for the occasion, and the hardlight-nanomesh framework inside whirred-up in a suitably expensive-sounding manner. A countdown had begun, and their soon-to-be award-winning RPG was unleashed into the sphere as normal.

But, oddly, there was no player detected. When they shut everything down and looked inside, Nathan had vanished.

"Well, James," a pale, sweating CEO said to his second-in-command, "I guess it's time to call in the lawyers."