steahl (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
steahl) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bakerstreet2013-02-14 10:50 pm
steahl) wrote in bakerstreet2013-02-14 10:50 pm
Dystopia
The future is what you make of it
We've all read the stories and seen the movies; the future is coming. It may not be pleasant, but we can't escape it.
This is a world where cities have built upon the bones of themselves for so long that no one remembers what 'dirt' is unless you mean 'grime'. A place where the rich and privileged touch the sky, the middle class dreams of the stars, and poor downtrodden have the power to change things if they'll only reach for it.
Rules:
- Post with your character/canon/preferences
- This is a meme that encourages AU craziness but allows for canon integrations so decide what you'd prefer
- Read through options and choose what you like, or use a handy RNG if you're stuck
- Include a starter if so inclined
- Tag out, have fun
- Change the future
Class
- High/Royalty: You are superior. You grew up in the sky gardens above the murk. You may be genetically refined, enhanced in utero to be the Best, or maybe you were just born to a good name, but you have standing and money. You can afford trips anywhere, offworld, that floating beach, psych diving, you name it and there is no obstacle.
- Upper Echelon: You exist as a buffer between the truly elite and the 'lower' classes. Perhaps you are a companion blessed with beauty and grace, skill enough to entertain and distract your benefactors. Or maybe you are the man who ensures 'daddy's' company doesn't founder while the heir entertains themselves with drama and indulgence. Either way you have a benefactor, someone who can be convinced to spend money on you, which is almost as good as having funds yourself.
- High middle class: You are the rung below the upper crust. Perhaps you had a family name once, or maybe you're a burned out sports hero, but you have a well paying job in upper management and you still get some nice party invites when someone wants to talk about the good old days.
- Middle middle class: You have a steady, monotonous job between the number drones and the bosses. It's not always a comfortable place but you can afford to bioengineer a kid or two or have a few nice nights out on the town a month.
- Lower middle class: You're hanging on by the skin of your teeth but there's enough money to stay ahead of the bills and the neighborhood you live in is safe enough to walk home through as long as you keep an eye out.
- Number: You were born to parents with no standing or wealth to their name; in fact they were in debt to their eyeballs and you, their child, get to pay that debt. You were assigned a number when you were born and slotted into a company queue. You may have a name but no one uses it outside a few friends and you do all the boring, grinding drudge work of the company you were given to, but at least you never have to worry about room and board. That's all handled by whoever holds your number.
- Pariah: You were born or exist off the grid. You can't earn money legitimately but there's plenty in the under city who will pay you despite that. Maybe if you keep your nose clean you'll save up enough to hop a colony ship off world, or maybe you like it down in the crumbling murk!
- Created: Perhaps you're a robot, maybe you're an experimental hybrid, no matter what you are you were made and you might have rights or you might not. Depends on what you did to define yourself now doesn't it?
- Alien: You're not from around here. Time travelers, aliens from beyond the known space, dimensional observer, whatever. You don't have a citizenship card and you may or may not need one!
- Supernatural: Vampires, fungus zombies, werewolves; they're all people in the city. No reason to hide any more, you can avoid sunlight, take out loans from blood banks, and even star as television heroes if you want. For a price though.
- Enhanced: Supermen, Wonderwomen, laser eyes and healing factors; they're cropping up randomly as genetics mingle and rays filter through the city layers. Maybe it's the water?
- Transitory: Your fortunes are sliding and changing. Maybe you're on the way up, maybe you're on the way down, but like is changing from what you knew.
- Robbery: Maybe you're the target, maybe you're the villain, but one of those upper city banks is being robbed blind.
- Mix and Mingle: You're trying to make connections above or below, but this blending in thing is harder than it looks!
- Numbers unite!: Who cares if you're a Number yourself? That's just wrong and people should know better! Time to lift your voice, a stun wand, maybe a handy electric grid, but your voice, the voice of the PEOPLE, will be heard!
- Pet: Somehow you've attracted someone's attention. Maybe you're being kept in caged splendor, close enough to reach the clouds as long as you keep your owner happy, or maybe you're a topsider being held below as a trinket!
- Earning a living: Really, you're just trying to get by! You don't want to lose your space in the apartment, you might end up moving to the true under city and you've heard the stories of the levels below!
- Saving them: You're a doctor, a nurse, a pastor, anyone who will cross social lines to reach out to others in kindness.
- Seemingly saving: You have an ulterior motive for your good days. Maybe you need to count the number of pariah in an area so they can be rounded up and numbered, maybe you just like to hunt below, either way your smile is false.
- What right?: Who put them in charge? The city would run smoother if you were the voice they listened to!
- First contact: Aliens exist, and now they are on the streets, observing all the people. Maybe you're the alien?
- Mixed community: The city has held everything from AI systems to aliens, to sentient caterpillar. That can lead to some tense situations sometimes!
- Forbidden love: You fell for that dancer below, or maybe a street sweeper can't take their eyes off the window shopper...
- Nature hates you: It's tired of putting up with scabrous cities and chemical shifts in the atmosphere and now there are monsters/storms/etc. Anything that the world can throw at you to show displeasure!
- One of Us: There's a new drug out, or an addictive computer game, and maybe there's alien worms crawling in people's ears. Whatever the reason, people are losing their individuality, sliding into a hive mind and not coming back out. Maybe you were tempted and you're safe as a part of the whole or maybe it scares you!
- Dirty Job: But someone has to do it. You're a cleaner of some sort. Maybe you recycle garbage, maybe you take out bodies and feed them into food processors, what ever you do isn't pretty and it might not be legal...
- Treasure Hunters: There's a lot left below, down in the bones of the city. Far below even the dark tunnels of the pariah lies old town. The old labs, the old stores, just old, but not forgotten. Not by you.
- Princes in Hell: Better to have power, even if it keeps you from the sun. Crime has evolved so much in this world of the future, and there's enough to go around. Granted, all teh old favorites are still around as well.
- Cults are your FRIEND!: With so much diversity in this city it's inevitable that the strangest things are getting a following. Maybe you created a world where sentient pineapples can see the future, maybe you emulate the Great Yeti and never, ever, shave. Regardless you're in, or leading, a faction of believers!
- SCIENCE!: With cutthroat megacorprations holding the pulse of the city science is a good business. Maybe you're a good company employee, maybe you're an independent looking to save the world or make a name for yourself. Whatever your drive SCIENCE is happening!
- The Sound of Hooves: No one ever said cowboys died. Some people are still walking the streets in dusters and pulling pistols at noon, metaphorically speaking. They are the law, their own law, and they're holding the city to it. Vigilantes and terrorists, or maybe just true Good Samaritans.
- Copper Badge: Law is tricky in a city where so many businesses have their private army security men and laws that apply inside the walls of their holdings. Still, the average Joe deserves to be safe and you do your damnedest every damn day because you love this city somehow.
- Brave New World: You've never seen anything like this! Wherever you're from, controlling home, a lab, that cage down on forthieth, well, this is all new to you!
- Elite: You (and possibly your team) are the best, you work for the highest bidder, or you take the jobs that amuse you, hell, maybe you have a MISSION, whatever, you kick ass, take names, and you can do it in or out of the atmosphere!
- The End is Nigh!: You've seen it, somehow, the City is going to fall and take all it's citizens with it! What do you do now?
- Vacation!: Maybe you just stepped into a VR parlor for a bit, or maybe you managed to have memories implanted of a beach far off, whatever you're doing it isn't normal for you and you're trying to relax!
- Create your own adventure: Really, go for it, I'm done with this section of the list!
- Bionics!: You have machinery bits in you! Scanner eyes? Quicksilver legs type G76? You are not factory spec anymore!
- Pets: This is a big, crazy city and it has some truly weird animals in it! Maybe you adopted a cricket lizard, maybe there's a trained mud puddle that follows you around. Go nuts!
- Wifi Everywhere: The chip in your head lets you surf the net from anywhere!
- Being Watched: Something is watching you. From drains, from taps, you swear there's eye stalks and the landlady won't believe you. Just carry on.
- Etc etc etc? Make up your own kiddos I'm done here.
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