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npcs.
NPCs.
npc origins.
There are three original major NPCs - two that currently live in Anchor and one who left Anchor to go to another city in the distant past and, with the tunnel to the second city open again, will be making her way back to Anchor. All three of these NPCs were test subjects created by the research staff who first tried to tame the Wastelands - rebellious and unwilling to cooperate, these citizens were used to test out various reactions to the Shift, to be transformed into something more useful than they were as objectors to the cause.
But rebellious creatures stay rebellious creatures, and the three test subjects could not be controlled after their bodies and minds were...adapted. Scrapping the entire project, the researchers sealed the three test subjects into stasis chambers and left them for dead; later, the second wave of people to live in Anchor found the stasis chambers and rescued all three. Once freed, the three test subjects went their own ways, only to be drawn slowly back to Anchor as the third wave of settlers - the current cast of the game - started to arrive.
But rebellious creatures stay rebellious creatures, and the three test subjects could not be controlled after their bodies and minds were...adapted. Scrapping the entire project, the researchers sealed the three test subjects into stasis chambers and left them for dead; later, the second wave of people to live in Anchor found the stasis chambers and rescued all three. Once freed, the three test subjects went their own ways, only to be drawn slowly back to Anchor as the third wave of settlers - the current cast of the game - started to arrive.
creepy joe.
The disturbing-looking but well-meaning man known only as Creepy Joe was originally a civilian father who came to Anchor with his partner, a high-ranking researcher. After realizing he couldn't live with the situation they were all in, trapped on this strange dangerous world with people who were willing to use intelligent beings as cannon fodder, he was captured and brought in as a test subject. He was put through years of being subjected to whatever strange phenomenon, creature, or other strange thing that came with the Shifts. Eventually, Joe finally met his match in the form of a small tentacled creature that turned out to be a parasite. It leapt at him, attacking and entering his body through his eye.
After being infested by the parasite, it started to take him over, slowly but surely. It overtook his logical thought, it took over his body, leaving him fighting for coherence and control of his own body. Over time, the parasite took over almost completely, leaving Joe with only his compassion, protectiveness, and curiosity about people.
As new 'recruits' started to come to Anchor, he was drawn back in, watching the people, curious and lonely, and slowly re-learned to assert some control, how to speak and interact with people. Eventually he became protective, setting up surveillance systems to watch everyone for their own safety. Unfortunately, after the systems were found out, the residents were understandably upset, though after a confrontation, Joe started to be slowly integrated into the population.
SINI.
SINI, short for Specialized Interactive Network Interface, was originally an incredibly talented physicist, a young prodigy who was easily recruited with promises of adventure and never-before-seen anomalies and phenomena to study. Too engaged with her research and studies, she managed to tune out all of the messed up things going on around her - to some extent, it was purposeful. She didn't want to know about anything shady going on because she was enjoying her research.
Until disaster struck. Accidentally locked out of Anchor during one of the more intense Shifts while researching an anomaly that preceded it, she was forced to endure the punishing elements on her own. When she was recovered by rescue teams, she was barely alive, suffering from radiation burns on 99% of her body. After being rushed back to the city, she underwent extensive treatment and following several touch-and-go days, she tentatively stabilized. Living in a world of constant agony no matter how much medication she was given, she begged to die but was kept alive by the team because her intelligence and capability was a necessity to their research. Over the following weeks and months, suspended in a surreal world of pain, she started to lose her grip on reality, dissociating out of a desperate need to escape her situation.
Eventually, the medical team, engineers, and computer experts managed to find a way to strip SINI's consciousness from her body and transfer it into the computer as a powerful AI program. While she retained all of her knowledge and skill, her personality had drastically changed. Speaking in strange disjointed sentences and occasionally losing touch with her new reality, she was difficult to communicate with but an indispensable help with research. She also proved incredibly talented at maintaining and upgrading the systems in Anchor's computer systems from the inside. Because of this skill, when the second wave tried to leave the city on a repaired spaceship, SINI was chosen to accompany them to help navigate and to maintain the ship's systems.
After the ship was severely damaged by the solar winds whipping around the planet, it took months for it to slowly fall back to the surface with the atmosphere tearing at all the protective barriers keeping the radiation from space and the Shifts away from the people inside. As the population of Anchor, who SINI had sworn to protect, slowly lost their senses, starving or eating irradiated food, suffering from radiation poisoning and the knowledge that they were only waiting to suffer and die, she could do nothing to help them. All she could do was watch and try desperately to keep any semblance of functionality going.
And then, after the ship crashed into the sands of the planet, she was alone. She was alone when the ship traveled to other places, uninhabitable and broken, and she was alone when it crashed again into the red sand. Already unstable, being forced to watch her charges die slowly and painfully and then being alone with those memories for so long tipped her over the edge from unstable and eccentric to completely lost.
After being discovered in the ruins of the spaceship by some interested Third Wave explorers, she followed them back to the city, catching a ride in their electronics, and managed to go back 'home' - the computer system of Anchor. Despite feeling safe and comfortable for the first time in many decades, she couldn't quite manage stability, though she did manage to regain her capacity to communicate, albeit while switching back and forth between a protective, maternal persona and a vicious, hard persona. This instability and rapid shifting between personas and behaviors left her once again struggling to warn and protect a new population, who couldn't trust her after everything they'd been through.
Until disaster struck. Accidentally locked out of Anchor during one of the more intense Shifts while researching an anomaly that preceded it, she was forced to endure the punishing elements on her own. When she was recovered by rescue teams, she was barely alive, suffering from radiation burns on 99% of her body. After being rushed back to the city, she underwent extensive treatment and following several touch-and-go days, she tentatively stabilized. Living in a world of constant agony no matter how much medication she was given, she begged to die but was kept alive by the team because her intelligence and capability was a necessity to their research. Over the following weeks and months, suspended in a surreal world of pain, she started to lose her grip on reality, dissociating out of a desperate need to escape her situation.
Eventually, the medical team, engineers, and computer experts managed to find a way to strip SINI's consciousness from her body and transfer it into the computer as a powerful AI program. While she retained all of her knowledge and skill, her personality had drastically changed. Speaking in strange disjointed sentences and occasionally losing touch with her new reality, she was difficult to communicate with but an indispensable help with research. She also proved incredibly talented at maintaining and upgrading the systems in Anchor's computer systems from the inside. Because of this skill, when the second wave tried to leave the city on a repaired spaceship, SINI was chosen to accompany them to help navigate and to maintain the ship's systems.
After the ship was severely damaged by the solar winds whipping around the planet, it took months for it to slowly fall back to the surface with the atmosphere tearing at all the protective barriers keeping the radiation from space and the Shifts away from the people inside. As the population of Anchor, who SINI had sworn to protect, slowly lost their senses, starving or eating irradiated food, suffering from radiation poisoning and the knowledge that they were only waiting to suffer and die, she could do nothing to help them. All she could do was watch and try desperately to keep any semblance of functionality going.
And then, after the ship crashed into the sands of the planet, she was alone. She was alone when the ship traveled to other places, uninhabitable and broken, and she was alone when it crashed again into the red sand. Already unstable, being forced to watch her charges die slowly and painfully and then being alone with those memories for so long tipped her over the edge from unstable and eccentric to completely lost.
After being discovered in the ruins of the spaceship by some interested Third Wave explorers, she followed them back to the city, catching a ride in their electronics, and managed to go back 'home' - the computer system of Anchor. Despite feeling safe and comfortable for the first time in many decades, she couldn't quite manage stability, though she did manage to regain her capacity to communicate, albeit while switching back and forth between a protective, maternal persona and a vicious, hard persona. This instability and rapid shifting between personas and behaviors left her once again struggling to warn and protect a new population, who couldn't trust her after everything they'd been through.
Princess Gore.
The person known only as Princess Gore, or Princess, was never a normal contributing member of society. Originally a member of Anchor's military presence - tasked with security and combating the various monsters and other dangers that would show up in the city while the researchers tinkered with their theories, Princess excelled only because she was very, very good at killing.
The only real problem with that? She didn't exactly stop when there was nothing to kill.
It took a surprisingly long time for the powers that be to find out who was behind the string of murders that took place sporadically throughout the city, mostly because the victims were diverse, there was no modus operandi, there was very little logic behind the killings. Once she was found out, Princess Gore didn't struggle or apologize or show a shred of remorse. She just laughed.
Becoming the subject used most often for anything that might generate a super soldier suited Princess just fine. It hurt, was agonizing, she would lose herself to the pain while her body struggled to survive serums and parasites and drugs that were intended to make her stronger, more agile, faster, more durable. If she hadn't already been twisted, she certainly would have been by the time something, or a combination of somethings, stuck.
Unfortunately, the researchers could never really pin down what exact combination of new test substances mixed with lingering effects of previous tests caused Princess Gore to change, her bones thickening and hardening, the nerves that transmitted pain going dull enough that she could withstand an incredible amount of damage, the tissues of her body regenerating more quickly and without the genetic code that caused her to age. Even more unfortunately, the bulk of the research was completely lost when Princess broke free of her restraints, shattered the glass of her prison, tore apart the scientists who'd captured her, and destroyed banks of computers and equipment in a primal rage at being confined.
It took over a week and about a hundred soldiers to finally constrain her and get her into the stasis chamber where she stayed until she was released by the Second Wave of residents, who barely managed to corral her out of the city and into the Wasteland, where they assumed she'd die eventually.
She didn't.
After walking through the wastes, her body destroyed and rebuilt over and over again, determined to survive and continue her furious rampage, she made it to the nearest facility - deserted and full of mutated monsters and zombie-like husks that used to be people. She didn't feel a shred of unhappiness at finding it uninhabited. No. All she saw was an endless supply of victims.
Then the tunnel back to Anchor started to open up as the current residents, the Third Wave, started digging through the collapsed parts of it, every day removing the only barrier they had against the Princess...
NPC Submissions.
▶ Bots, sapient or otherwise
▶ 'Infected' surviving subjects from Anchor's first wave, with the intelligence of a high-functioning zombie
▶ Shift Raiders, people like Joe who, depending on lifespan, have found some way to survive outside in the shift, though with no small amount of suffering and mutation
▶ Ghost-like, energy imprints who are on-and-off sentient, depending on the Shift
▶ Animals/monsters found in Anchor with special abilities, such as telepathy, or higher intelligence
Or anything else you can think of! Remember, NPCs are non-playable characters, so everyone will be able to insert them into their threads, interact with them, and use them in plots as they like.
To submit your NPC for players to encounter, use the form below. Remember to include a fair amount of information regarding their looks and personality so others will be able to accurately portray them in their threads!