Steampunk Ahoy!

[fleshydisguise]

THE STEAMPUNK MEME


"Imagine it... The Victorian Age accelerated. Starships and missiles, fueled by coal and driven by steam. Leaving history devastated in its wake." - Doctor Who

What To Do:
1. Post with your character's name and canon in the subject line. You can leave it blank but it would be exceedingly helpful if you were to kindly post a role for your character to give other taggers a jumping off point.
2. Tag other characters, using the RNG to pick a prompt if you so choose.
3. Have fun and play nice!


The Prompts:
01. Masquerade Ball - Dress in your best and don a mask for a night of mystery and enchantment. Will you manipulate suitors with the movements of a fan, try to work out who you do and don't know, or immerse yourself fully in the experience and do something you normally never would?

02. Airship Pirates - "With a crew of drunken pilots/We're the only airship pirates". You've taken to the skies in an airship, and now a pirate is what you are... Or what you're up against! Ruthless cut-throats or simply men fallen on hard times, these pirates are not marked with a good reputation. A fight just may be on the horizon.

03. Exploration - The Steampunk genre is not only marked by technology and a unique aesthetic, but by the spirit of adventure! Now's the time to look for new lands, or explore the wild, exotic places you've always longed to see! Be careful to avoid that colonialism nonsense, though. The natives aren't usually on board with it.

04. Cattlepunk - Steampunk in the Old West! What will you get when you combine steam-powered technology with the life of cowboys, saloons, and a thirst for gold? It's harder to beat the sheriff when he's got a metal heart and his revolver mounted right on his arm.

05. New Discovery - Besides finding new lands, there's finding new technology; new invention! Be it a new way to create steam power, a unique kind of animatronic, or something entirely unheard of, you could have just gotten your name down in history books! Is it the money you're in it for? Or just a love of science?

06. Factory Work - We can't all flutter our fans in the drawing room. Someone has to work to make all this steam power that everyone is going crazy over and, lucky you, you get to be a factory worker. Are you down in the hustle and bustle of the factory floor, laboring for a few shillings to keep your family out of the workhouse, or a factory owner looking down on your empire?

07. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea - The advances in technology aren't just used above ground; you have a job to do beneath the waves, perhaps as a spy on enemy territory or a merchant trying to get to your destination faster. Or maybe you're just an explorer. Just watch out for the sea monsters.

08. Flesh Made Metal - Amputation? No problem. Clockwork limbs, eyes, and even hearts are available for those who can afford the necessary enhancements. Supposedly they've even created clockwork brains...animatronic creatures so lifelike you can barely tell they aren't human. What measure is a man?

09. Post-Apocalypse Steam - Something terrible happened to the world. Maybe it was a natural disaster, or maybe humanity has committed a grave crime against the planet. Either way, the result is a world forced into ages past - although with modern knowledge, perhaps it won't be quite the same as in the history books.

10. Revolution - Whether you're a citizen of a colonized nation, a plotter in the back streets of a city or simply a factory hand who is sick of poor treatment, it's time to rise up against your oppressor and fight for freedom! Let's just hope there are people willing to help you.

11. Wild Card - Roll again, pick a scenario that strikes your fancy, or come up with something not represented here!

[Meme taken and modified, with respect, from brunettely]

Comments

Abe Sapien | Hellboy

[bprd_fishman]

[It's hard to get a proper job when you look as Abe does.

He's arranged for a home for himself in the city, catering to the superstitious and the open-minded alike as a professional psychic. His excuse for the mask he wears is that he prefers to see only with his mind, blocking out any distractions from his other senses. As to his hands, bared only on the palms, he heated them in holy fire to refine his sensitivity to the spirit world.

Only a few of the servants even know what he is under his high-collared shirts and gloves. He is a strange monstrosity created by foul arts, the nature of which he does not remember before Father discovered him on the banks of a German river. It is not the spirits he consults but the possessions of those around him, which his sensitive fingers allow him to read with his psychometric abilities. It is a lonely and isolated life and his major contact with the outside world is traveling in the slums. No one down there cares about masks that reveal only overlarge eyes. If he were to be exposed...he doesn't rate his chances of survival very highly.]

Supergirl // DCU // OTA

[superfine]

Earth-3 Red Hood | Batman: BatB

[aceinthehood]

[Red Hood likes to think of himself less as a pirate/terrorist, and more of a pro bono privateer.

His Dishonorable Majesty, the Owl King, has a high bounty set for the Red Hood and the noble men (and gorillas and ghosts and brains in jars and whatever Sinestro was) of the Harlequin. Their airship moves between cities on a regular basis, fighting the Owl King's oppression of the masses in whatever ways they can. A little sabotage here, a little Robin Hooding there, a little slipping through the streets under cover of darkness to make off with a powerful new weapon before it can be turned upon the rebel forces. Whatever hope they can bring to the people crushed under the boot of tyranny. The gears of justice grind slow but they do grind, and piece by piece they're grinding up an empire.]

Princess Twilight Sparkle | My Little Pony: FiM

[sparklebookworm]

It's common knowledge that the newest Royal began as Celestia's protégé before becoming an alicorn princess, a title that is by no means ceremonial. Especially considering that most of the recent scientific advances were her doing.

Few could have guessed, or even dreamed that behind the socially awkward bookworm was a pony that would change life in Equestria and beyond. Ponies shouldn't be the only ones to benefit from these innovations.

Still... don't expect all this success to have changed her. She's still a socially awkward bookworm at the end of the day.

11: The Chitinous Brood.

[broodofone]

[Beneath the city, away from the light and the surface hive of metal and stone, there is another hive. Extending down into the rock, the sickly luminescence of living, squirming lamps light the Swarm's work as it toils within its many labyrinthine burrows.

These warrens occasionally cross paths with less-traveled tunnels bored down from above, and every so often a scuttling form may be seen shying away from an unfamiliar light. The a less fortunate few catch more than a glimpse as a tide of chittering creatures suddenly carry them away. But the Swarm has little interest in the surface creatures, and such violent episodes are rare.

But among the many smaller creatures lurk those of greater size and alien intelligence. One among them, crafted in singular purpose, drags its bulk up to the highest tunnels, tasting the air. The hardy things that dwell in the damp and the refuse, cast down by the surface, these things are of interest to it. They have traits that can be learned from, strands to unravel and study.

With a series of undulations and a flurry of many-jointed limbs, it buries the first few meters of its body beneath rubble and rock dust, dulling the glow of the fleshy green sacs that line its back, obscuring its form, now hidden amongst the debris.

Satisfied with its camouflage, it waits, slowly digesting its last samples.]

[bprd_fishman]

[Abe rarely leaves the house, save for his occasional coachrides out to a desolate section of the coastline where his more primal needs can be indulged. When he does go out it's at midnight, body completely concealed by clothing and spectacles, and only where he's sure few people will see him. The tunnels are dank but they are safe from society's prying eyes.

Tonight something feels off. His palms are tingling as he spreads his consciousness down through the rock and earth, seeking out the source of the aberration. Abe walks in the darkness with no need for sight, picking his way through the muck towards the strange creature.

Sentient, but not human, like him but not like him. Something even more alien than the fishman hunting him down.]

[broodofone]

[The skittering of previously sampled creatures is ignored. They are already cataloged and known.

After long hours of silent waiting, the vibrations of two feet are felt through the rock: the gait of a surface-dweller. This would be ignored unless necessary, but... A new taste is in the air. Infected with surface matter, but profoundly different. A novel form.

Drawing closer. Soon, it will be close enough. Further down within the tunnel, legs quietly brace against the rock, readying for sudden movement.]

[bprd_fishman]

[Danger, say his hands. Hunger. Abe reaches for one of the items hanging from his belt, a small electric torch. Hanging besides it is a sheathed knife. It knows his presence already but it may not know exactly what it's found.]

I'd prefer not to conflict with you. [He pauses in his tracks, body tensed.] If you'll come out we can talk like gentlemen.

[broodofone]

[Somehow, it has been sensed, and yet a declaration of rational exchange has been made. Sensible.

Abathur rises up, bricks and dust cascading off of its bulk, the light glowing from its body revealing a four-eyed face above a gaping green vertical slit of a mouth that vibrates as it produces the sounds of surface communication, four grasping limbs fidgeting slowly.]

New strands evident. Sample required.

[bprd_fishman]

[Abe flinches, but only slightly. It's ghastly, worse than the things he's read about in Father's library. But he can feel some kinship with the hideous, and so he stays past fear, though his hand rests against the knife's hilt.]

A sample of what? Strands of what?

[broodofone]

Your substance. [Tasting the air only yields so much information. To consume is to study. To learn.]

The sequences underlying your form. [It slowly leans forward, eager to discover.] Will incorporate into work. Improve Swarm.

[bprd_fishman]

Um.

[He has a general idea of what it has in mind, he just doesn't like it.] Would a...small piece suffice? A few drops of blood? I'm rather attached to my parts.

[broodofone]

If population low, replentishable components... acceptable. [Without a breeding population, single samples must be carefully preserved.

But still, yet more could be done. It spreads its four grasping arms in an open gesture of offering.] Can trade. Take inefficient parts. Give them back improved. Rational exchange.

[bprd_fishman]

[Abe takes a step back.] Ah...no. I am not sure they would be reattached comfortably. [What an intriguing creature. Not hostile, though undoubtedly dangerous, it seems to genuinely be interested in helping him. Via dismemberment.]

The population is quite low, I'm afraid. We can't have you...consuming things, not against their will. It's frowned upon.

[broodofone]

[An inconsequential consideration.] Am precise in work. Functionality would improve. Pain would be temporary. [Or acceptable in trade for capability.]

[It pauses for a moment, taken aback by the words.] Unclear. [The statements of this creature are confusing to it. Its logic is foreign and inscrutable.] Inside, can touch. Can learn. Examine sequences. Beneficial.

[bprd_fishman]

But you'll kill them if you do so, and I--we cannot have that. I must ask you desist.

[broodofone]

Refer to humans? [It already promised to preserve a population of this rare new creature. This thing from the surface therefore cannot be troubled by that concept. Would harvest sustainably after determining location of natural habitat.]

Lack of adaptive traits. Primitive structures. Unnecessarily complex. Do not use. Very bad. [It had tried, but given up on the humans. There were few if any traits that they possessed that could not be more efficiently paralleled in function.]

Ellie Langford ✚ Dead Space series; Airship pilot

[shuttled]

Captain Jack Sparrow | Pirates of the Caribbean

[bottlearum]

[Steampunk Airship Pirate Captain Jack Sparrow, thank you very much.]

[bprd_fishman]

Then they should not be of any use to you. Please refrain from consuming or...analyzing them. [He feels a bit queasy referring to it in such neat terms.] In exchange I will happily offer what of my body can be replenished.

[broodofone]

Acceptable. [Less than what was hoped for, but until the population can be identified, the individuals will not be fully harvested.]

Will take sample. [a long limb reaches out towards the small creature]

[bprd_fishman]

--well, you're going to have to wait a moment! [Abe pulls his hands back towards him, as if offended.] I need sterile equipment, collection tools.

[broodofone]

Am sterile equipment. [Its claws spread again in a placating gesture.] Fear is threat response. Am not threat. Fear necessary.

the Doctor | Doctor Who | OTA

[nevermindtherunning]

[Either time travel or something completely AU, I'm OK with that!]

Alec Lightwood - The Mortal Instruments

[alec_lightwood]

((ooc: Role can change depending on what option the person tagging wants.))