PLOT » ❝ welcome to the occupation ❞

[initiates]

FROM MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27TH until SATURDAY, MARCH 10TH Exsilium is going to be actively occupied by The Masked. They have caught wind that something unusual is going on and that the population of exiles has suddenly and rapidly boomed, and they will be coming in to forcibly microchip the transports with tracking devices. What does this mean? The following:

WHAT WILL BE HAPPENING:

The Masked will be stationing themselves in every available public location. They will wait beside doors, they will guard the front entrances to the apartments, and they will be making themselves a presence within the shopping area of the Initiative Hold. When your character ventures out into any public space (though they will be encouraged to hide), they will be confronted by two or more of The Masked, who will then use blunt force to hold your character in place and -- using a small installation gun -- they will seat a tracking microchip into your character's back, between their shoulder blades.

Being 'chipped' during this plot is 100% optional. It will not affect your character immediately and will instead have unfortunate repercussions in the future, none of which will directly harm your character but will remain private for the time for plot reasons. Most notably, The Masked will be able to track your characters movements should they leave the island and venture into the United Earth -- but there will be more in the future.

Your character may also be chipped and have that chip removed! However, know that it is in a difficult location to reach for them alone and that in 99% of cases they will probably have to have a friend dig it out of their back with a knife like a true bro.

WHO ARE THE MASKED:

[ Glossary info here. ]

The Masked are the Government-sanctioned, militarized police force of the United Earth (all of the continents and land that is outside Exsilium’s borders). They wear all black, skintight suits, and have large masks that cover all of their face except for their mouths. There is a large visor that comes down over their eyes to allow them to use computer equipment to track and enhance their own abilities. The Masked are humans who have been both bio-engineered to be stronger and more efficient than a standard human being, and are also aided almost entirely by their suit. Their suits are powered by their own energy using a cable that follows their spine and links up into the back of their helmet from behind.

Aesthetic details aside, they are powerful. They have immense and incredible speed and marksmanship skills. They are proficient in almost every weapon, as they can pick one from the ground and know how to use it with the aid of their computerized suits. Essentially, they’re what the Government of the United Earth spends every single dime on -- their most prized investment. They’re pretty damn efficient.

CAN WE FIGHT THEM:

By all means! You can fight them, but keep in mind that they are currently at their most powerful. They are god-mode. Your character can distract and weaken them enough to escape from their clutches without being chipped if your character is appropriately powered for that sort of feat. In the end for most characters, their final options will be to run away, be killed, or to accept their tracking chip... and then run away.

CAN WE WIN:

Not at this point. There is a reason for this -- as the game progresses, The Masked are going to be one of the focal points of change that occurs from the success of missions. As more and more missions are completed, The Masked will become weaker and weaker (their tech will become more limited by changes made in the past, for example) and their initial occupation is to demonstrate their power to the exiles and transports in Exsilium. At this point in time you may fight them, but you are not going to win.

ALL OF THIS BEGINS ON MONDAY and will be signaled when William Laurence (bottlegreen) and Big Boss (survivalism) come back into the city proper after a lovely and telling expedition to the borders with the warning of a sweeping police force’s excursion into Exsilium.

As always, if you have any questions/concerns/comments, please leave them here! Additionally, if you have any suggestions/ideas, those are also encouraged & may be left on this post!

Thank you for your time everyone!

Comments

[clinical]

If a character is chipped, would you like us to drop a not anywhere so you guys can keep track without hunting for it?

[initiates]

Ah, yes please! On this post is fine.

[initiates]

Correction: we have a post for it now, [ here! ]

[birdhousesoul]

Will the Masked inform characters what these chips are / what the chips do?

[initiates]

They will not, but the introduction/kick-off post by Big Boss and Laurence will!

[birdhousesoul]

In that case, Anders will absolutely go around offering to dechip anyone and everyone, because these are so similar to what the Templars use against runaway mages.

[ura_no_ura]

Hi! Thanks for this event post, but I had a question -- for characters that are from shounen manga, the kind of skills that are listed here for the Masked do not seem to be "god-mode" on the level of what shounen powers tend to depict.

For example, Ichigo's zanpakutou, in bankai form, with one slice of the arm can cleave an entire building in half. And that's not even getting started on what his getsuga tenshou, which is a massive blast of energy, can do. (We're talking blocks and blocks of city damage with ONE of those things. And that's even when he's not in Visored form.)

Naruto in Kyuubi mode travels so fast all you can see is a streak of yellow light (not to mention that he can do things like the equivalent of creating bombs that create massive craters without much effort). Itachi has a technique that renders him virtually impossible to attack (Susanoo -- it's an absolute defense) and also can send out attacks that combine fire that literally burns through anything, including metal (Amaterasu) and other huge, ridiculous attacks.

In general, shounen powers are absolutely ridiculous and absurd to a degree of WTF! I guess I am just curious as to whether or not there can be Masked characters that can be leveled up to their status as to make the "CANNOT WIN OVER THEM" rule more realistic? Because if all they have is super strength, super speed, and excellent marksmanship, I really do not see how realistically that can stop shounen characters who have the ability to do ABSURDLY crazy things like travel faster than light, clone themselves into infinity (hi Naruto), walk on air and sort of teleport themselves around whilst literally cleaving MOUNTAINS in half with one blow from their super-swords (ffft Bleach), or simply suck entire bodies into other dimensions (orz my own character what is this even).

I am totally cool with not winning and what not (lol it's actually more fun to deal with defeat sometimes), but it's hard to realistically think of how some of the shounen characters in this game cannot defeat the power levels that are depicted here. Halp? What do?

[obstinates]

Yeaaaaaaah, seconding this for the shounen group. Totally cool with not winning as well as long as it's realistically implemented in some way (leveled up masked dudes or such). Naruto isn't the type to kill anyways which is why I wasn't going to really bother much with the chipping since he'd just knock the dudes out and go on his way (though he'd also probably spend his whole day saving other people from the masked ffff shounen protags).

THINK DRAGONBALL Z. Everybody knows how ridiculous that is, right? Yeah.

We're just curious as to how we should go about this because we don't wanna seem like godmoddy hax people or the type that are all like "LOLOL MY CHAR IS BETTER THAN YOURS"

Please halp!

[initiates]

It is to be assumed that they are incapable of being defeated, regardless of the capabilities of a character (at this time).
There's roughly 150~200 of them and in cases where they are at a higher risk of being overpowered they will come at one single character with an army of reinforcements (up to thousands, if absolutely necessary). In the case of shounen manga characters, it would be possible for the reinforcements and the initial Masked to rise to the challenge. It would take more of them, but they too have evolutionary weapons technology and would be able to adapt quickly to meet any adversary at this time.

Essentially, it may be unrealistic at this time for the character to be hindered by them, but it will happen. For this particular case, the characters will be met with armies of reinforcements that will target only that character if it is necessary and will match their movements with their own evolutionary ones.

I hope this is helpful! Let me know if you have any further questions, definitely. :)

[ura_no_ura]

Oh! It just occurred to me, in case anyone isn't familiar with any of these things I've just described, or if it seems too abstract and not concrete enough, here are some examples of what I mean by ABSURD:

1.) Ichigo's getsuga tenshou, without bankai
2.) Ichigo vs Aizen (in which one swing of Ichigo's bankai sword causes such a huge shockwave entire mountains explode, wtf)
3.) Naruto's kyuubi mode
4.) Naruto's tailed beast mode
5.) Naruto in Kurama mode (In case it's not clear what's going on here, five massive bombs by huge monsters have just been deflected by Naruto.)
6.) Lol Kakashi =_=;
7.) Sigh, Itachi you are so hax - Susanoo
8.) Itachi's Amaterasu - fire that burns ANYTHING. Even fire!

orz shounen characters...

Anyway so should we assume that like, in the event of say, NARUTO who can literally create up to ~1000 EQUALLY STRONG clones of himself without much problem at all, that such characters would be met head-on with increasingly large armies or something?

Also, just to clarify, for the evolving thing, is it that the characters evolve whilst fighting to be able to beat whatever/whoever it is they are fighting against? (I think in terms of the above videos, Naruto in Kyuubi mode and Ichigo vs Aizen come to mind as most emblematic of "RIDONKULOUS STRENGTH") So hypothetically the armies/groups fighting against said characters would evolve to that absurd level too, right? Just want to make sure!

And what about shounen characters with absolute defenses like Itachi, for example? How would that be dealt with? (Just to get an idea of how the Masked work!)

Sorry for all the questions! alkdfjasdkfj

[initiates]

Yes, they would be capable of evolving and matching -- and in most cases (ah, but only at this beginning time) -- even exceeding the capabilities that they are approached with. So they would evolve to that absurd level as well, yes!

Absolute defenses would be handled a bit different. In situations with the Masked, their main objective at this time is to chip transports, rather than defeat or injure them. So if they find themselves in a situation where they cannot necessarily defeat or subdue someone, they will attempt to find a way to distract them with their armies and ensure that just one is able to chip them. It should be noted, however, that if it comes down to it, they will move on from opponents that are impossible to chip and move on to the next transports for the sake of efficiency.

Many of the characters who are vastly overpowered from them would probably get out of being chipped based on this need for efficiency alone, as they'd want to corner everyone who was easy and then only worry about the harder characters later.

[ura_no_ura]

Okay, I think this covers questions from my end since Kakashi isn't insanely godmode and hax like some other characters (cough Naruto cough)! I more or less was trying to figure out how to even begin conceiving of the fights, how they would look like, etc.

Incidentally, would these weapons possess supernatural abilities like Bleach-level energy blasts or Naruto-esque gigantic fireballs, lightning/electricity blasts, etc.?

Thanks for all of your patience and speed with responses!

[obstinates]

Yeah, on the note of being met with Masked reinforcements and such, Naruto sort of has the ability to produce his own army with shadow clones. Usually the technique is very dangerous and most shinobi can only create maybe a dozen at max, but Naruto is one of those crazy shounen main characters gifted with crazy abilities. He can actually summon in the thousands and have all his clones still be very powerful.

Shortly before the point he was taken from in canon Naruto dispatched a large number of clones to multiple battlegrounds during a world war. Roughly 50,000 enemies (all being classified as the tip of the top) were accounted for before Naruto's clones joined the battle, and then they were all wiped out.

He can do stuff like this when it comes to his clones.

I'm actually mostly curious about that "evolving" thing mentioned about the masked. If they could evolve to, say, be immune to a type of attack after another masked is attacked by it. Say they're all interconnected or something, always evolving, technology that produces force-fields, etc etc etc. Even so, it's still hard to evolve to be able to combat 1000 ridiculous foes at once.

I think the main point is I don't plan on abusing Naruto's abilities like that at all because nobody likes being godmodded on and I have a firm belief in giving every character time to shine and be awesome. BUT there are a few of us that this really affects and we just wanted some clarification (and thank you so much for being quick with responses and such!).

I think talking this out and such also gives us a chance to help build the game's lore and backstory too, plus I think it's kinda fun :D

And guys we realize how ridiculous our canons are. We are so sorry lol

[initiates]

Definitely, and we totally appreciate the questions too! It's hard, and I feel like sometimes the world's lore is very vague, and I hope for questions like this so that we can work to build it and kind of shape it with all of our players as the game goes on - so this is perfect! There is a lot that is left up to interpretation and to molding as everything fits together and lots of what we've discussed makes for great new ideas. :D

(Also, apologies for replying to both of your comments in one, I hope that is all right).

As far as Kakashi-mun's question, their weaponry would be capable of the same things as such as energy blasts and gigantic-fireballs but wouldn't necessarily be supernatural! So it would be like they had their own evolutionary weapons like the transports, but theirs would be more tech-based, like a giant flamethrower that could draw from their own personal energy, or suits that worked alongside their existing guns to match massive equipment that could blast energy as a weapon.

I like the idea of them being capable of evolving to opposition that they've met through other Masked having experienced it! So if one of them is attacked with a type of attack, the others could pick up on that through the network of computers that runs in their suits and help them all to fight that sort of attack in unison; that seems like a good solution too for lots of extra powerful characters' capabilities.

[ura_no_ura]

Yes, it's fine, we're both tracking this thread anyway! Thanks for the clarification on how the weapons work (gyahhh all my noobness is showing here sob) and I think the whole idea of being somehow connected which allows evolution is really, really cool! This also makes it more realistic in terms of how they can hold their own against the ridiculousness of shounen characters! :D

[obstinates]

Building lore is FUN.

ALSO I just had a random thought that might make things more interesting and such. When they actually start going on their time-traveling missions and such... because of the actual transport, there's a cooldown period afterwards when they arrive where maybe their full powers aren't accessible, making them have to rely more on their team AND THEIR SENTIENT WEAPON for the mission until they can access their ridiculous stuff.

And then when they return home, the same cooldown period. Maybe their bodies have to adjust to the changes in the timeline or something? Just a suggestion to put to a vote or something!

As for that other stuff, it all sounds pretty good to me :D Once again, thank you so much! I'm just excited about this place and all and getting clarification might help for future reference and newer players.

[initiates]

I do like the cooldown period idea! We had actually toyed with something like that, so I'm glad you mention it! That way they would be able to get more experience utilizing their weapon as well and giving it the chance it needs to evolve alongside them as well as for general team-building (which is something the Initiative is innncredibly fond of, as it were).

You're welcome, and thank you too! :3

[ura_no_ura]

kfkjd;lkfjs;dj /facepalm

Okay I lied about that being the last question, I suddenly realized I had another.

Is it possible if Kakashi could cast an illusion that would buy him time to run away? Since he's really injured right now chances are, he probably wouldn't waste too much energy and risk getting more injured in a fight and would more likely than not, cast an illusion to buy him time to get away. Would this be doable?

[initiates]

That would definitely be doable, yes!

[ura_no_ura]

Thank you!!

[theguideless]

WHEEE SOMETHING FUN TO RETURN TO FROM EXCURSION
Marty went a-wandering, but I'm sure he'll run into some of these dudes when he traipses back to civilized places.

[noble_nate]

How exactly is the chip going to be inserted? Will they have some sort of device?

[initiates]

They will use a small gun that is pressed against the character's flesh, between their shoulder blades. It will essentially pop the chip into their flesh, against their spine.

[birdhousesoul]

I understand they cannot be defeated BUT! What would happen if someone set them on fire? Or tried to set them on fire? By shooting fireballs at them, or just unleashing a great big stream of fire from his hands like so?

Would their armor just sort of resist fire altogether? Would it react to heat?

[initiates]

Similar to the conversation with Naruto-mun and Kakashi-mun; in that case, they would retaliate with similar weaponry, however, it would only be after one of them had experienced having been the victim of a fire-assault before they would be capable of fighting back against it (they would evolve to meet it, so to speak).

It would fall under the same guidelines like [ the ones here! ]

[loyalism]

Fox will be allowing himself to be chipped (and not telling Big Boss) for the purpose of finding out what they actually do, as he figures most if not all people will be having them removed.

Also, a question. Would it be possible to get one of the Masked alone and have a group take him down / capture him temporarily? Or are they still too godmodey when there's only the one of them against several? (Is it even possible to separate one from the group?)

[initiates]

At this point in the game, it would be nigh-impossible to get one separated from the others. I hate to leave them so difficult to take advantage of, but I do promise that it's with much purpose for the future of the overall plot!

[loyalism]

That's cool! Would you be against it being attempted, anyway? I have no qualms with Fox getting his ass handed to him and he really just wants to know what exactly they're capable of.

[initiates]

Oh, definitely not! You could certainly go for it!

[noble_nate]

Another question: Will there be another opening post to kick off the actual invasion? And should all threads regarding the event be done in that post?

Or, should we post our own separate threads? I'd like to maybe do some plotting with other players, but I wasn't sure exactly how you'll be handling events as far as posting goes.

[initiates]

There will not be an opening post, but it is to be assumed that the activity is going on during the time frame noted in this post. All of the threads and posts relating to it may be anywhere in the game at this time, as it is a gamewide occurrence!

It's definitely okay to do plotting with other players, and even (especially) encouraged in this case!

[noble_nate]

Sweet, thanks for the answers!

[onemoredeath]

OKAY I HAS A QUESTION NOW:

Anyways, Takegami is going to approach them and get chipped, however there are a couple ways i have in mind for it. In the first instance, he records it happening as a kind of guide for others - would this be possible without the Masked blocking out such a feed? He is also going to be rather insulting towards them so would the Masked react towards the insults like any hard working officer that just got kicked in the figurative nads for the millionth time that day? Or they just will ignore, tag and move on?

[initiates]

Yes, he could film it if he likes -- he could even put it on the Network if he so pleased.

Were he to insult them, they would probably not notice. In their manner of ensuring ultimate efficiency they would be trained not to reply to it, but it might give them pause for a least a notable second. :)

[onemoredeath]

Awesome~ Thanks!

[theguideless]

Is the microchip implanted in the muscle or fixed on the bone?

[initiates]

In the muscle (so it will be slightly less painful to remove)!