u/CH1CK3NW1N95

"When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him." -Euripides

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The first civil war of the Arden Republic was a messy affair begat by a messy past. Where once there was conflict and disagreement, there came all-out bloodshed. Where once there was bitterness and resentment, there came brutality for the sake of vengeance. Where once there were rumblings on both sides of someone doing something about it, there came the uprisings and crackdowns, spiraling down together in a cycle of trying to be more brutal and hellish than each other as if in hopes of salvaging victory from the jaws of hell.

Nine years of officially declared war brought the transition from one era into another. Fifteen years and much healing later, the scars and scorchmarks can still be found. The Arden Republic proved victorious against the self-crowned Ichan Separatists, and celebrated their formal surrender by declaring them conquered; their homes, their bodies, their very lives and beings "cleansed" of all sovereignty and declared property of the state. Their worlds were militantly converted into industrial penal colonies, their population was broken up and scrambled in a forced diaspora across the stars, and their emerging culture was called obscene and deviant, stamped out wherever it could be found.

Yet there were those in the Arden Republic who believed their rulers had gone too far, visited too much punishment, acted too brutally in their supposed quest to end the war and move on to whatever the future held next for them. They did little about it at first for fear of going against the post-war attitude that dominated much of the Republic, and since most of them had little power on any grand scale. They were composed of orbital shipyard foremen, planetary government bureaucrats, mid-level freighter crew members, hydroponic farmers, and a handful of others who saw what was happening and came to a different conclusion than the majority of their society.

It was after the Centauri Massacre, however, that these sympathizers would be given another chance to act on a larger scale.

The official story was that a group of Ichan terrorists bombed a nuclear reactor, killing seven hundred and injuring a thousand more. Some suspected it was a false flag operation conjured up to play the political game, some thought it was an attempt to cover up a regulatory oversight by invoking a cultural boogyman, but all saw the surviving Ichans and their descendants being cracked down upon even tighter in its wake. Already a put-upon and persecuted group, they had been virtually robbed of personhood and viewed by the powers that be as walking security risks; rounded up without due cause, judged without trial or appeal, and condemned to the hellish penal colonies that used to be their homeworlds, the heirs to the loss of that civil war were now squarely in the clouded eye of the republic that hated them.

Yet the sympathizers, each acting of their own accord and without any central leadership, came to a conclusion; "we will help these people get away from the madness without being swept up in it."

Even as rumors began to spread of a second civil war in the works, a quiet, secretive exodus from the republic began. Ichans were carefully plucked from whatever trouble they had been forced into, smuggled through back channels and under radars, and shepherded toward the worlds on the outer rim where they could be assured of a fair chance at a new life, leaving their persecution behind.

Freighter crewmen cobbled together improvised hidden bunks in the forgotten holds of their ships, clerks forged temporary identities and documents, doctors quietly reopened clinics after hours to those who knew how and who go ask, informants looked the other way or conveniently "forgot" key details when asked by the agents of the Central Investigation Counsel. The game of cat and mouse began to play itself out among the stars, the planets, and the black void in between.

The stage is set, the only question that remains is who you are and what pieces you push about the board.

Are you an Ichan runaway who wants a chance at a new, better life, risks and hardships be damned? Are you a sympathizer who runs a safehouse and walks the line of throwing your fate in with those of people being hunted? Are you a former or current CIC agent in the throws of a crisis of conscience? The answer is yours, I'm simply here to set the stage and ask the ages old question:

With all that in mind, what will you do now?

&&&

Howdy! I hope my idea for a sci-fi journey of strife and hope caught your eye.

I'd like to tell the tale of an an ordinary person or small group doing their best to make their way toward something better, hang on to hope, and build their new future(s) out of the shattered scraps of their old lives. This idea is heavily inspired by such things as Schindler's List or the Underground Railroad, with all the tension and uncertainty and hope amid the darkness that can come from people taking a chance and stepping into the chaotic unknown.

It will be a long journey. Friends can be made and lost on the way, families might be broken up and reunited, and there will be uncountable brushes with fate as cover gets close to being blown and a turn of good fortune stands alone between a runaway and the hunters looking for their prey. Whether you're playing one of the fugitives yourself or someone aiding them on their way, I guarantee you're going to find enough thrills and feels in this story to suit you just fine.

Allow me to introduce myself and get the basic stuff out of the way. I go by Chicken here, I'm of the male persuasion, and I'm 25+. I usually post daily, sometimes having to skip a day or two for whatever reason but I'm good at staying in communication when that happens. My posts are usually about 4-5 substantial paragraphs, but can be shorter or longer depending on the scene; I don't believe in hitting word counts or filling every last bit of space at all times, it's all about what the scene needs.

I write on Discord, but I like talking with people a little over here before we move there. So if you're interested in this idea of mine, shoot me a chat request and I'd love to hear from you! Also please include the word "exodus" somewhere in your message to let me know you read the whole thing. I'm going to bed soon at time of writing, so I'll get back to people as soon as I can if not right away.

Thanks for your consideration, and have a nice day :)

"When a good man is hurt, all who would be called good must suffer with him." -Euripides

&&&

The first civil war of the Arden Republic was a messy affair begat by a messy past. Where once there was conflict and disagreement, there came all-out bloodshed. Where once there was bitterness and resentment, there came brutality for the sake of vengeance. Where once there were rumblings on both sides of someone doing something about it, there came the uprisings and crackdowns, spiraling down together in a cycle of trying to be more brutal and hellish than each other as if in hopes of salvaging victory from the jaws of hell.

Nine years of officially declared war brought the transition from one era into another. Fifteen years and much healing later, the scars and scorchmarks can still be found. The Arden Republic proved victorious against the self-crowned Ichan Separatists, and celebrated their formal surrender by declaring them conquered; their homes, their bodies, their very lives and beings "cleansed" of all sovereignty and declared property of the state. Their worlds were militantly converted into industrial penal colonies, their population was broken up and scrambled in a forced diaspora across the stars, and their emerging culture was called obscene and deviant, stamped out wherever it could be found.

Yet there were those in the Arden Republic who believed their rulers had gone too far, visited too much punishment, acted too brutally in their supposed quest to end the war and move on to whatever the future held next for them. They did little about it at first for fear of going against the post-war attitude that dominated much of the Republic, and since most of them had little power on any grand scale. They were composed of orbital shipyard foremen, planetary government bureaucrats, mid-level freighter crew members, hydroponic farmers, and a handful of others who saw what was happening and came to a different conclusion than the majority of their society.

It was after the Centauri Massacre, however, that these sympathizers would be given another chance to act on a larger scale.

The official story was that a group of Ichan terrorists bombed a nuclear reactor, killing seven hundred and injuring a thousand more. Some suspected it was a false flag operation conjured up to play the political game, some thought it was an attempt to cover up a regulatory oversight by invoking a cultural boogyman, but all saw the surviving Ichans and their descendants being cracked down upon even tighter in its wake. Already a put-upon and persecuted group, they had been virtually robbed of personhood and viewed by the powers that be as walking security risks; rounded up without due cause, judged without trial or appeal, and condemned to the hellish penal colonies that used to be their homeworlds, the heirs to the loss of that civil war were now squarely in the clouded eye of the republic that hated them.

Yet the sympathizers, each acting of their own accord and without any central leadership, came to a conclusion; "we will help these people get away from the madness without being swept up in it."

Even as rumors began to spread of a second civil war in the works, a quiet, secretive exodus from the republic began. Ichans were carefully plucked from whatever trouble they had been forced into, smuggled through back channels and under radars, and shepherded toward the worlds on the outer rim where they could be assured of a fair chance at a new life, leaving their persecution behind.

Freighter crewmen cobbled together improvised hidden bunks in the forgotten holds of their ships, clerks forged temporary identities and documents, doctors quietly reopened clinics after hours to those who knew how and who go ask, informants looked the other way or conveniently "forgot" key details when asked by the agents of the Central Investigation Counsel. The game of cat and mouse began to play itself out among the stars, the planets, and the black void in between.

The stage is set, the only question that remains is who you are and what pieces you push about the board.

Are you an Ichan runaway who wants a chance at a new, better life, risks and hardships be damned? Are you a sympathizer who runs a safehouse and walks the line of throwing your fate in with those of people being hunted? Are you a former or current CIC agent in the throws of a crisis of conscience? The answer is yours, I'm simply here to set the stage and ask the ages old question:

With all that in mind, what will you do now?

&&&

Howdy! I hope my idea for a sci-fi journey of strife and hope caught your eye.

I'd like to tell the tale of an an ordinary person or small group doing their best to make their way toward something better, hang on to hope, and build their new future(s) out of the shattered scraps of their old lives. This idea is heavily inspired by such things as Schindler's List or the Underground Railroad, with all the tension and uncertainty and hope amid the darkness that can come from people taking a chance and stepping into the chaotic unknown.

It will be a long journey. Friends can be made and lost on the way, families might be broken up and reunited, and there will be uncountable brushes with fate as cover gets close to being blown and a turn of good fortune stands alone between a runaway and the hunters looking for their prey. Whether you're playing one of the fugitives yourself or someone aiding them on their way, I guarantee you're going to find enough thrills and feels in this story to suit you just fine.

Allow me to introduce myself and get the basic stuff out of the way. I go by Chicken here, I'm of the male persuasion, and I'm 25+. I usually post daily, sometimes having to skip a day or two for whatever reason but I'm good at staying in communication when that happens. My posts are usually about 4-5 substantial paragraphs, but can be shorter or longer depending on the scene; I don't believe in hitting word counts or filling every last bit of space at all times, it's all about what the scene needs.

I write on Discord, but I like talking with people a little over here before we move there. So if you're interested in this idea of mine, shoot me a chat request and I'd love to hear from you! Also please include the word "exodus" somewhere in your message to let me know you read the whole thing. I'm going to bed soon at time of writing, so I'll get back to people as soon as I can if not right away.

Thanks for your consideration, and have a nice day :)

A wandering vagrant is fishing through a dumpster, trying to find a discarded bottle of the hard stuff when his new friend intervines. A cockroach crawls from his pocket up to his shoulder and reminds him that he made a commitment to be sober, that he needs to do the right thing. The vagrant knows his conscience when he hears it, and closes the dumpster again.

A police medic rushes into an apartment building to respond to a hostage situation, seeing that the hostage has already taken a gunshot wound to the stomach. As his comrades deal with the shooter, the victim could swear she sees a pair of wings as the medic begins praying under his breath and mending the wound, a golden halo coming into focus around his head.

A judge sits in her chambers, contemplating a tricky case. She scribbles the image of a feather into the investigation notes and puts them on one side of her scale, draws a heart on the defendant's dossier and puts it on the other, then watches which way the scale tips to get the conclusion of her summary judgement.

The ordinary men and women who walk the streets of the city know nothing of these events. They do not see the ancient gods, legendary stories, and feats of fantasy that go on around them. They forget about the things they see which do not fit into their mundane understanding, they see with their own eyes something from their wildest dreams only to imagine it with certainty as something drab and common, they are still in the grip of the Mist, they have not been given the powers of a Mythos.

But you, you are different. Something from beyond the Mist has reached you, taken root within you, granted you the powers and troubles of a story old or new. Perhaps an ancient deity whose name is only spoken in universities or written in history books, perhaps a character of popular fiction beheld on the silver screen or in the pages of comics. Maybe a hero or villain from the countless pages of world literature, maybe a legend told around campfires by generations of frightened children with too much sugar and too little sleep. Wherever it came from, whatever it is now, your Mythos has taken hold within you, and the only thing you now know for sure is that your life is about to get a lot more interesting.

What myth has chosen you to tell its story anew? What parts of your normal life will you leave behind to make room for more power? Where will you draw the line and refuse to let your Mythos take over? Do you consider it to be a great blessing or a cursed nuisance? And most importantly...what will you do now?

The way you use your new powers and cover your new weaknesses is yours to find, the details of who you are and who (or what) you'll become are yours to set, the borders between your normal life and your mythical one are yours to draw and redraw. Whatever you choose, however, the City of Mist will ensure your life rarely has a dull moment from now on.

For better and for worse.

+++

Salutations, fellow denizens of the internet :D

I'm a big fan of a TTRPG called City of Mist, and I've been hankering to do a story set in that world for a little while. If anybody else has heard of it, then awesome, but for anybody who hasn't, here's the quick "elevator pitch" description:

You are a person called a Rift, someone who's been chosen to carry the power of a story or legend called a Mythos. A Mythos can be anything fictional that's fairly well known, from movies to folklore to mythology to whatever, basically anything goes. The central theme of the game is balancing your Mythos with your normal mundane life, and deciding what you'll do with the powers you've been given and where you'll draw the line between your power and your humanity.

For the IRL stuff, I'm of the male species, 27 years of age, and from the EST time zone. I've been roleplaying and writing in some capacity for about half my life, so while I'm not a grandmaster of the craft, I think I know enough to create an awesome story with someone who wants to work with me. I'd be happy to send a writing sample to anyone who wants to verify that for themselves.

I want my partner to be 18+, pretty please, and I'd like my partner to be at least semi-literate, but otherwise, I'm more or less open to anyone! Come one come all; if you're interested in this prompt, then I'm interested in talking more with you about it. I can't address every detail or question someone might have in this post, so if you have any questions or comments, PM me here and I'll be glad to answer them. I write on Discord, so hopefully we can swap contact info for over there after a little time over here. And if you'd be so kind, please include the word "mythological" somewhere in the subject of the message to let me know you've read the whole thing.

I hope to hear from you soon! :D

"I spread confident wings to space and soared toward the infinite, leaving far behind me what others strained to see from a distance. Here, there was no up, no down, no edge, no center. I saw that the Sun was just another star. And the stars were other suns, each escorted by other Earths like our own. The revelation of this immensity was like falling in love." -Giordano Bruno.

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The year is 2688.

Humanity's destiny hangs on a coin at the apex of its flip, and its best laid plans have been swept up in the gales of fortune.

The finest scholars the world of Earth has to offer have banded together to crack the mystery of folding space, look for one last time upon the cosmic playpen of our thoroughly colonized solar system, and fling the gates open to stride out into the rest of the cosmos like children just learning to run when it seems only the blink of an eye ago they were just beginning to crawl.

At first, the powers of the world tried to keep the newly emerging diaspora in check. Giants of industry, governments of nations around the system, churches both new and ancient, all tried to keep the messy, chaotic, and brilliantly optimistic diaspora in check. But as humanity saw the unfolding dream of life on other worlds, a new start on a scale never before imagined, and a chance to leave behind the old baggage and troubles that had weighed upon them for millennia, it became clear that humanity would not allow its ancient birthright to be held captive and dolled out to them a scrap at a time according to the whims of the "chosen" few.

For every colossal ark-ship of the United Worlds Counsel, and every colonist fleet of every megacorporation anyone cared to name, there were a hundred smaller enterprises that sprang up like dandelions in a newly fertilized field. Communities who pooled whatever they could save up in hopes of a fresh start, folk of modest wealth who chose to risk it all out there among the stars, renegades using theft or deception to take the potential of others for themselves, all found their way into a ship equipped with the space-folding technology and packed with the seeds to sew into a new future on the soil of some other world.

With naught but the hope in their hearts, the clothes on their backs, and the beginnings of something new in their cargo holds, it is the story of these smaller colonists I want to tell, and how their modest threads will weave together across the void to knit a tapestry unlike anything seen in the history of our species before.

What will they leave behind in the past and find out there in the future? Will humanity stand united against the troubles the cosmos throws our way or be torn asunder by the demons that followed us from within? What unimaginable new ideas, cultures, and figures will be pieced together from the debris of our shattered cosmic chains?

Humanity's destiny hangs on a coin at the apex of its flip, and its best laid plans have been swept up in the gales of fortune.

What will happen as the coin falls and who will catch it when it lands? That is what I want to find out.

+++

Hi there, and thanks for reading.

Today, I come to you with a tale of a hopeful, chaotic diaspora. Of a future that sees one of our most ancient dreams as a species come to pass and carry us far beyond the light of our own sun like the steeds of our gods. Of the modest and meager getting a chance to surf the tide of new expansion in a future where everything is being rewritten at a speed faster than light and everything can change at the drop of anyone's hat. Of excitement, uncertainty, connection, resilience, and the blending by mindful choice of the old and the new.

This idea will involve a lot of worldbuilding, both out of character to lay down the context and principles of the story, and in character as the characters take reins of their fates and decide how to build their new lives and communities. Therefore, this is for folks who like worldbuilding, please come with your own ideas about things such as the colonial operation we'll be focusing on, which themes or topics you'd like to explore in the formulation of a new society, and what pieces of technology you'd like to include or exclude from the setting in general. I have my own ideas on all of the above and more, and I love collaboration, so I can't wait to put our heads together and see what happens. And I also like OOC chatter in general, one of my favorite things about this hobby is how many chances I get to make new friends :).

For the IRL stuff, I'm of the male species, 20+ years of age, and from the EST time zone. I've been roleplaying and writing in some capacity for about half my life, so while I'm not a grandmaster of the craft, I think I know enough to create an awesome story with someone who wants to work with me. I'd be happy to send an additional writing sample to anyone who wants to see one.

I want my partner to be 18+, pretty please, and I'd like my partner to be at least semi-literate, but otherwise, I'm more or less open to anyone! Come one come all; if you're interested in this prompt, then I'm interested in talking more with you about it. I can't address every detail or question someone might have in this post, so if you have any questions or comments, PM me here and I'll be glad to answer them. I write on Discord, so hopefully we can swap contact info for over there after a little time over here. And if you'd be so kind, please include the word "perihelion" somewhere in your message to let me know you've read the whole thing.

I hope to hear from you soon! :D

If your tight five for open mic night starts with "let me tell you about the time I knocked up a Vory boss's daughter", you might be a shadowrunner.

If you insist on a SWAT team and an awakened investigator being present before getting your blood drawn, you might be a shadowrunner.

If your dog responds to the command "geek" rather than "sic'em", you might be a shadowrunner.

If you get your car's fuel from a black market alchemist rather than a grid or a pump, you might be a shadowrunner.

If your most common reaction to true crime podcasts is "oh yeah, I remember that guy", you might be a shadowrunner.

If your usual pizza delivery guy carries a milspec assault rifle and rides a decommissioned combat bike, you might be a shadowrunner.

If your parents got you a box of live grenades for your 10th birthday and taught you how to use them against Lone Star, you might be a shadowrunner.

If your ideal honeymoon destination is an active warzone in the middle of a viral outbreak, you might be a shadowrunner.

If you've ever successfully appeased a summoned spirit with an offering of novacoke and APDS rounds, you might be a shadowrunner.

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Lay em' on me, folks, who's got some more to go around?