Hey folks,
Sorry for not getting the CP one done on time. I'm still working on it, but other projects and divorce will get in the way of the best intentions.
However, Fred kicked me in the butt to get something done for Game Chef and I've got it pretty much figured out. It's a little more post human than I normally do, but I figure it's pretty awesome. Let me get into the nitty gritty parts.
1. Journey - You want to get Over the Wall to what's been told to you to be the promised land.
2. CIty - the machine city of Vaturdu is where you spend your time trying to get through in order to escape
Edge - The goal is the wall on the edge of the city, it's mythical but it's the demarcation between what is real and what is machine.
Skin - the only currency that works in the game. If you need to buy your way through something, will you sacrifice your own body to make it Over The Wall.
First 1k words.
Everyone wants to be Over The Wall. It’s in all the stories you hear as soon as you come into your creche. The ones that your keepers tell you to help you sleep at night when the monsters would come out of the shadows, clacking their teeth and scraping their fingers against the windows. Over The Wall is the promised land. A place of sunshine, honey, dreams, hopes, and the real. As real as you were now, and how you would never be once you left the creche.
They love the flesh Over The Wall. They worship the skin and shun any metal that you might have needed to use to get there. Some versions of the stories even tell you that they’ll replace the metal bits with your old parts that have magically reappeared, or someone else’s parts. It doesn’t matter where it came from, as long as it was yours and when you were whole again you would be richer than the richest of all the fleshbots in Vaturdu.
Vaturdu was what you would be born into, once you left the creche. It was the city of machines, were the skin you had was the only currency you could use to buy anything you needed. Work for food was a normal exchange, but if you wanted anything more than simple food and lodging then you need to trade your skin in for something bigger and better. In fact, your first act as an adult was to pay the creche for their care with something. They replaced it with a functional part, that was easy since the mechanics were everywhere, and options were available for better pieces for a price.
When you take your first step outside of the creche and see the city before you, the first thing all new citizens do is look for the wall. Everyone says that they can see it, there in the distance and after a few days they all want to find it. Life in Vaturdu is hard and the promises Over The Wall are tempting, but navigating the city is never easy for anyone. There are too many dangers, too many people jealous of the skin that you still have and want to take it from you. The stories all agree that in order to get Over The Wall you need to be at least a little bit real, or else your cast out of paradise back into Vaturdu to become one of the robots that wait and watch for other creche kids who still have skin left to sell.
Character Creation
You were born to a Creche with your brothers and sisters. The creche is important to Vaturdu as it keeps the population from dying when the bots that remain fall apart and can’t afford to be replaced. It’s also a way to keep the currency flowing in the city, as without an influx of new flesh the whole of Vaturdu would collapse on itself. No one violates the Creche, not that there haven’t been a few bots that have looked longingly through the high voltage fence at all the young skin there, but the defenses around the creche have stopped even the most determined bot enough times that the lessons have sunk in.
While you played in the creche, you knew none of this. You just knew your life of eating, sleeping, playing and learning. What did you learn? What did you like to do? This will inform your character. All children in the creche learn how to Run, Hide and Jump but your interests went beyond that. There was something that drew your curiosity onward and you picked up some extra skills.
Some kids were into Robotics, the learning of how their eventual bodies would work and so learned how to Repair, Identify, Build and Improve anything that had to do with machinery and parts. There were those kids who knew how to get what they wanted, from the flesh kids and from the other machines. Those kids were Traders and figured out how to Deal, Scrounge, Notice and Cheat. Outside there were kids that were busy playing games and pushing each other around. They got called Athletes by the governesses and Bullies by the rest. They figured out how to Hit, Break, Sprint and Leap. Which ever one you were helped defined who you were when you left the Creche.
You and your Creche siblings did everything together. You were groups together when there was eating time, sleeping time and learning time. You mixed with the other Creche children during free time, but most of your time was spent with those who were cloned in the same vat as you were. That means you got to know them very well, and in some cases too well. One of your siblings Was Horribly Mean To You. You need to remember how they were mean to you, and what you want to do back to them to get even. Whatever they did, you know that the governesses turned a blind eye to what was going on. It may have been to toughen you up, make you grow in the face of adversity, but you certainly felt that you could have gone without it and still turned out able to face Vaturdu head on. Of course, your other siblings noticed this and one of them Was Your Closest Friend. Who were they and what would you do for them? Would you give them your skin to buy their own freedom? Would you jump in front of a buzzkill to protect them from getting hurt? Would they do the same for you?
Then came that fateful day when you and your Creche siblings had to leave the protection of the Creche and make it to the outside world. Before you left, you had to pay the Creche for their tender loving care, as they put it. You had to give them something for their pains. Would it be a hand, a foot, your eyes? Don’t worry, they had the standard replacement which would work just like the old ones did. They had implants that could make you better, but they were a bit more expensive. Would you trade in your arm in order to get a hand that would be able to crush anyone who got in your way, or your hand in order to get eyes that didn’t miss anything?