Update: The game's afoot! [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/362.117231]
In the year 1999, Earth faced her darkest hour. Unknowable intelligences bent their implacable will upon this fair planet, and over the vast gulf of stars reached out their hand to take her for their own. Terrifying mechanical and biological weapons stalked the cities of the world, and gleaming UFOs hovered arrogantly in the skies.
The fate of the human race was on a knife's edge, but as so often at the moment of crisis the heroism of a few saved the lives and liberty of us all. The men and women of X-Com fought the invader in the forests and the cities, in the deserts and the harsh arctic, and eventually took the fight to their very home, Mars.
The fight was brutal, but mankind emerged victorious. The alien menace vanquished forever. Or so it seemed.
In it's dying moments, the guiding intelligence behind the invasion had given one final electromagnetic scream, a pulsed communication laser, reaching out to Earth herself and to a horror greater than any could have imagined.
Deep in the ocean trenches, where no vehicle made by man could survive to report it's presence, something long dormant began to stir.
Forty years had passed since the victory at Cydonia. Forty years in which mankind once again thought itself safe. But now that safety was to be shattered once again, the seas would burn with the fires of war against an inhuman foe.
Mankind would need heroes once more.
Mankind would need X-Com.
As some of you may know, at the start of the year I ran a Let's Play of UFO: Enemy Unknown [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/362.82574]. It was, if I do say so myself, something of a success, and all good successes demand a cash in sequel.
The cash in sequel in question will be X-Com: Terror From The Deep, and I'll be starting it in a week or so.
So what's this thread for? Well first it's to fill in the timeline a bit between the two games, because I'll be kicking straight in with in-character writing, and second it's to gather interested players and let people make up some characters so that I can write them into the updates a bit better.
For the uninitiated, Terror From The Deep is basically the original but underwater (the traditional recycled but in space thing being somewhat redundant, though that didn't stop them eventually), and I'll be approaching it in a similar way. So what I'm looking for from you the players is a character for a brave chap or chapess willing to get into a barely armoured diving suit and fight the menace of alien invasion on the bottom of our fair oceans. I can't guarantee your survival (though I do my best), but I can guarantee that if you die it is in the service of freedom!
Some things you may wish to know in creating your character:
Terror From The Deep is set in 2040, the political landscape of the world is much changed. In the wake of scandals following the infiltration of the United States Government in the First Alien War, the United States entered a period of chaos, sparked by the secession of the state of Alaska, eventually internal conflict in the remaining states spread north and south into Canada and Central America. Anarchy reigned for a brief period before a new union arose, incorporating the entire North American continent barring the now independent Alaska.
Central and South America formed into unified political blocs to resist being drawn into similar chaos, New Mexico encompassed Central America and the Caribbean, whilst the continent of South America was unified into what became known as the Brazilian Union.
Europe found herself riven between the northern and southern countries, and eventually split into two distinct entities, Scandinavia and the Euro-Syndicate, with many of the eastern countries unifying once more with the remains of Russia in the Eurasian bloc.
The continent of Africa eventually fell into the hands of corporocracy, unifying and incorporating much of the continent into the gargantuan Africa Corporation, with only the north remaining seperate in the form of the Egyptian Cartel.
Chinese Communism eventually faltered, and the nation broke with it, either joining with the Federal Republic of Korea or with India in the Asian Coalition, Japan remained seperate from the mainland, as did southeastern China, now known as Free China.
These power blocs rest in uneasy peace, with much actual power held by corporate interests (though none so boldly as the Africa
Corporation), and they have been unwilling to fund what they see as an unnecessary relic, so X-Com has been reduced to a shadow of it's former self, based in secret in an underwater facility off the strait of Gibraltar. Only a few of the lessons of the first war have remained (the only mods to this game are the removal of Molecular Control, because it's still broken, and the initial base layout changed to match the ones I built in the last game).
The main game will start in a new thread in a week or two, to give people time to sign up and hash out their characters, I'll be updating this one less frantically than the last one (I'm aiming for tuesday and thursday updates) so I can spend a little more time smoothing each update and fleshing out details as much as my narrative skills will allow.
In the year 1999, Earth faced her darkest hour. Unknowable intelligences bent their implacable will upon this fair planet, and over the vast gulf of stars reached out their hand to take her for their own. Terrifying mechanical and biological weapons stalked the cities of the world, and gleaming UFOs hovered arrogantly in the skies.
The fate of the human race was on a knife's edge, but as so often at the moment of crisis the heroism of a few saved the lives and liberty of us all. The men and women of X-Com fought the invader in the forests and the cities, in the deserts and the harsh arctic, and eventually took the fight to their very home, Mars.
The fight was brutal, but mankind emerged victorious. The alien menace vanquished forever. Or so it seemed.
In it's dying moments, the guiding intelligence behind the invasion had given one final electromagnetic scream, a pulsed communication laser, reaching out to Earth herself and to a horror greater than any could have imagined.
Deep in the ocean trenches, where no vehicle made by man could survive to report it's presence, something long dormant began to stir.
Forty years had passed since the victory at Cydonia. Forty years in which mankind once again thought itself safe. But now that safety was to be shattered once again, the seas would burn with the fires of war against an inhuman foe.
Mankind would need heroes once more.
Mankind would need X-Com.
As some of you may know, at the start of the year I ran a Let's Play of UFO: Enemy Unknown [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/362.82574]. It was, if I do say so myself, something of a success, and all good successes demand a cash in sequel.
The cash in sequel in question will be X-Com: Terror From The Deep, and I'll be starting it in a week or so.
So what's this thread for? Well first it's to fill in the timeline a bit between the two games, because I'll be kicking straight in with in-character writing, and second it's to gather interested players and let people make up some characters so that I can write them into the updates a bit better.
For the uninitiated, Terror From The Deep is basically the original but underwater (the traditional recycled but in space thing being somewhat redundant, though that didn't stop them eventually), and I'll be approaching it in a similar way. So what I'm looking for from you the players is a character for a brave chap or chapess willing to get into a barely armoured diving suit and fight the menace of alien invasion on the bottom of our fair oceans. I can't guarantee your survival (though I do my best), but I can guarantee that if you die it is in the service of freedom!
Some things you may wish to know in creating your character:
Terror From The Deep is set in 2040, the political landscape of the world is much changed. In the wake of scandals following the infiltration of the United States Government in the First Alien War, the United States entered a period of chaos, sparked by the secession of the state of Alaska, eventually internal conflict in the remaining states spread north and south into Canada and Central America. Anarchy reigned for a brief period before a new union arose, incorporating the entire North American continent barring the now independent Alaska.
Central and South America formed into unified political blocs to resist being drawn into similar chaos, New Mexico encompassed Central America and the Caribbean, whilst the continent of South America was unified into what became known as the Brazilian Union.
Europe found herself riven between the northern and southern countries, and eventually split into two distinct entities, Scandinavia and the Euro-Syndicate, with many of the eastern countries unifying once more with the remains of Russia in the Eurasian bloc.
The continent of Africa eventually fell into the hands of corporocracy, unifying and incorporating much of the continent into the gargantuan Africa Corporation, with only the north remaining seperate in the form of the Egyptian Cartel.
Chinese Communism eventually faltered, and the nation broke with it, either joining with the Federal Republic of Korea or with India in the Asian Coalition, Japan remained seperate from the mainland, as did southeastern China, now known as Free China.
These power blocs rest in uneasy peace, with much actual power held by corporate interests (though none so boldly as the Africa
Corporation), and they have been unwilling to fund what they see as an unnecessary relic, so X-Com has been reduced to a shadow of it's former self, based in secret in an underwater facility off the strait of Gibraltar. Only a few of the lessons of the first war have remained (the only mods to this game are the removal of Molecular Control, because it's still broken, and the initial base layout changed to match the ones I built in the last game).
The main game will start in a new thread in a week or two, to give people time to sign up and hash out their characters, I'll be updating this one less frantically than the last one (I'm aiming for tuesday and thursday updates) so I can spend a little more time smoothing each update and fleshing out details as much as my narrative skills will allow.
