Hard Sci-Fi [MxF] [IM ONLY]

[Saurmag]

Happy New Year to all, BMR!

Some ground rules before we start.

1. Be literate and descriptive. I don't require 6 paragraphs going into detail on how a character's hair flows through the wind, but I can't do anything with three sentences either. Give me something to work with, inspire me to do the same for you. Two is the absolute least number of paragraphs I post, and it's usually more - considering I have something to bounce my shots off of.
2. Please don't try to convince me of roleplaying by any means other than IM services. I understand that most people here like threads, PMs, Email. I'm not the kind of guy. I can't take days to get a scene over with, be it an emotional one, smut, action or anything in between. I need to be into it, hyped up. Please respect this.
3. Kinks. If I'm honest, I'm a regular dude. I like most things, and I dislike most things most people dislike. I -won't- do vore/watersports/scat/feet. If you're unsure about something, you can always ask.
4. Timezones! My timezone is GMT+4. Yes, I'm in Russia. I can pretty much always devise some sort of schedule, so don't get your hopes down! Do understand that people have lives outside the internet. I won't leave you hanging if I need a couple days off, telling you in advance. Please do the same.

Everything below is not smut-centered and has no intention to be. I'm not looking for a fuck in space and human-horny aliens without rhyme or reason.
I'm looking for hard sci-fi and serious human challenges. I'm talking Heinlein- and Asimov-tier, Starship Troopers, Star Citizen, Caves of Steel kind of unrelenting settings. Settings that glorify Mankind as the greatest celestial conquerors, settings that undermine our pride as mindlessly brutal and uncontrollable or terrifyingly cold and calculating, where totalitarian coalitions vie for control of the masses and where free traders load their battered freighters for the long haul to the frontier.

EDIT: I think it's best I move my top craving up here:
- There are distant stars clustered far beyond the frontier, and those stars are settled. A rogue fleet, a forgotten number buried under centuries of records, settlers away from all. Today those worlds don't even know of each other, stagnating in feudal politics and utilizing mediocre, backwards technology. This heinous lie is kept alive by 'mages' that hold secrets none should; But lies have short legs, and after all these decades, young love and circumstance stumble upon the truth.

UPDATE: New stuff in Space, because I can go on forever. Now even more stuff!

I've got a bunch of other ideas, they all have fairly developed lore. Craving scale is Collapse-bottom/Space-top:

~Collapse/Apocalypse
- An entire nation is sold off by its treasonous government in the wake of global resource starvation, torn apart by its buyers with complete disregard for local population, sinking the entire area into rampant anarchy and banditry.
- Cold War bears a terrible fruit - the discovery of Noosphere, Earth's layer of human consciousness and thought. The USSR develops means to alter and twist separate pockets of this layer in order to manifest changes in probability and material anomalies. Decades after USSR collapsed, the Russian federation uses these weapons in the third world war, causing a massive spasm in the Noosphere and bringing about global chaos beyond control and laws of physics. In the void left by this event, small pockets of people continue to live all over the hideously altered world.

~Cyberpunk/Dystopia
- Classic cyberpunk - augmentations, hard drugs, wetware, neon nights. If you're a fan of cyberpunk, you know what I'm talking about. We can make it work.
- A crisp, sharp world welcomes its luxurious, corporate residents. Robotics have put down a bright path to the future (and put billions out of a job). With the rising trend of advanced robotics encased in synthetic flesh (The DEX), some of the best designers put together their own, custom-tailored, handmade DEX-Units that sell for massive amounts of money. Most of those assume the roles of personal advisers, servants and bodyguards. Yours is no exception.. is it?
- You see them in movies, clad in black and faceless as they storm decrepit houses, arrest and execute those who dare to defy and rebel against the totalitarian regime. But are they really what they're made out to be? This RP follows the life and work of the Civil Guard - part police, part death squad in a new world government established by those who once left for space, and returned with a sword.

~Space - pretty much one and the same setting divided by several dozen decades in this order:
- Mankind has spread across its share of the galaxy - small in comparison to the whole thing, yet incredibly vast in reality. Nowadays, separatist movements against Central Government flow in a nigh constant stream. Crippled by bureaucratic sclerosis and administrative crisis, CGE shines no longer, grinding constantly for domination over its subjects. A lot of this work is done by the unsavory, underfed, underarmed - the penal legions. From all worlds and cosmic prisons, conscripts are recruited with only one chance for redemption.
- You can trace how far mankind has gone by the quality of life from Earth to the darkest unexplored reaches; It decreases as you progress. Gone are the days when tomorrow's best tech was on the frontlines of celestial conquest - today, the Outer Rim, or the Frontier, is a place for the tough. No air support will glass millions of hostile indigenous species, no funding but the tight purse of greedy employers, but lord knows, someone has to get that sweet raw resource for the posh man to eat, and there ain't no cameras around.
- The cooling of Mankind's desire and ability to encroach upon the galaxy didn't just affect Frontier life. As time went, enormous ships of the past were harder to come by, no longer worth their cost when smaller, cheaper drives could get small ships farther and faster. The common man took to the skies in this capitalistic paradise, and many nowadays hardly feel at home anywhere other than their small piece of metal and their crew. (Same time period as above, different perspective.)
- Moved to the top, keeping this as timeline reference.

~Additional Space (Not part of my own timeline)
- Battletech/Mechwarrior. I know it's a long shot, but if you're familiar with it, we'll have a blast.
- Warhammer 40,000. Average Joe perspective - Imperial Guard, Chaos Cult, that sort of thing.

If you're interested, shoot me a PM! And please add context - if you write me "hey let's rp" without a bloody thing else, I won't respond.

I apologize for eye-gouging formatting.

 

[Saurmag]

One for the prisoner, slaving in mines,
Two for the wounded left on front lines,
Three for the insects that feed on your flesh,
Four for the wreckage and nuclear ash,
Five for the oil and six for the ore,
Seven for planets strip-mined to the core,
Eight for the dead and nine for their story,
Ten for Mankind, all its shame, all its glory.

 

[Saurmag]

When the High Priest returned Lord Matthias to the fold, we could hardly believe it. There he was one day, armor shattered by malevolent bullets thrown by Huthor guns, with a dagger in his thigh and pieces of his helmet lodged deep in his own visage. Another, after the High Priest had taken him away, and he returns sporting nothing but fashionable scars. Truly the Stars smile at our work, and each day I wonder more how anyone could deny the High Priest's divine powers.

 

[Saurmag]

They carried a barcode on back of their neck, wore their colors proudly from day one. For most, neither wore off. Another day and ten delinquents expire on the public square. Seven more are smeared over the concrete wall of their cell. Those that fired the gun don't weep like they did in pain tolerance training, don't suffer the way they did in psychic chambers. Like they say, everyone dies in training. I'm watching them laugh in the mess hall, tossing a ball.

 

[Saurmag]

If you think you took all the lashings you could handle on your way to the Legion, you're in for one hell of enlightenment. You're gonna take a lot of whip, I warn you. Probably hang, if your head's too far up your ass. They tried to straighten our shit out time and again, with lashes and labor and gallows, but it don't work, so they stick us in cells 'till they need a mad dog. And I'll be fucked seven ways if we don't deliver. You get me? Anyone call us what we ain't - thieves, murderers, marauders, u-s-e-l-e-s-s, you got my permission to give the bastard a full set of lumps. Ten lashes is worth the 7th a thousand times over.

 

[Saurmag]

Thump.. Thump.. - I watched the enormous thing walk across the rocky plane, crossing the valley. A salvage rig, Nomad. They don't build them anymore, not since Sovereignty. The one strolling ahead could well be a good 200 years old, and still running. Locals inherit them like family heirlooms, and you better have a planet in your pocket if you want to buy one. I thought of better times, watching it go like the last Terran elephants (or so I've read, before we started cloning them again), before we divided, stagnated, let dream tech like Nomads pass into oblivion. "Grant, stop patrol. Dig team ran into a hole, gonna clean and plug if it's a hive." Oh well.

 

[Saurmag]

Don't know much about ground life - hell, a tenner says I've spent more time offworld than in the dirt. Me and my Co, a shower, a galley, a kingly bed with nearly 2 (!) inches of mattress, and a cargo hold packed tight with cheaply bought and expensively sold - that's all a spacer needs. Granted, everyone likes to stretch their legs, or has to; life ain't all load-and-unload, and shit happens. Most people who wanna' get their own bird and go space-trucking don't check up on mortality rates, and mate, that's really for the best.

 

[Saurmag]

Obrez was writhing on the ground and we couldn't approach. Couldn't run or hide, couldn't cover our ears because of the gas mask. We could only shut our eyes and that made it even worse. He screamed like I've never heard anyone scream. Spikes of ice, bloodied, tore his clothing from within until he screamed no more. I was new to this, hardly sensing anomalies. Obrez had hopes for me, taught me how to guide. Ready or not, now I had to.

 

[Saurmag]

I did -so- ask for this. Sure, sometimes it's a pain to maintain all the tech on me, and in me. I guess I'm lucky I'm not one of the poor sods with tissue rejection syndrome. Life really does become too easy with anything up for augmentation. Now, if we could augment the sky to stop raining above Osaka grid.. When your boss wants you to mess with his rivals' wires, you don't want to slip that high up.

 

[Saurmag]

"Batchall refused, you inhuman fucks!" I spoke over the comms, replying to the Clanners on the other side of the canyon. Smoke Jaguar scouts ran into us and as befit their 'honorable' ways, issued us a challenge. Now that I was squeezing the alpha strike trigger, they wouldn't have much time to do that. They scattered like a school of fish, but we had an Archer and a Rifleman on the canyon edge, boxing them in with heavy flak. Honor and winning, in our age, ain't really compatible goals.

 

[Saurmag]

Pushing on through the long winter night, we finally closed in on our target early in the morning. We had plenty of ammunition, the horses were fed, but we ourselves needed to eat as well. The settlers wouldn't give up easy; Hawker warned us about their rifles but couldn't get a close look at their armory. We'd have to take the risk, cut them down and take the food to last us a few more weeks as we fled East from the foreign army.