This has been in planning for some time. Now is as good a time as any... Sparrowsmith Presents:
Welcome to Section Seven.

Setting - Section Seven, the last bastion of the human race after their planet succumbed to a calamity that no one truly seems to know the answers to. The sky is a soupey red and the sun hasn't been seen in some time. The planet outside is unreachable due to the city walls which surround the entire complex. Long ago there were seven other sections, but transport to them has been cut off - communication is impossible. No one has left the city in centuries.

The City - The city itself is divided into three sections:
-The Upper City - The upper city caters for everyone from the students to the businessmen at the top of the towers, but all are encased within the wall. Not even the tallest building comes close to seeing over the walls, and beyond the walls there is glass... The upper city itself is divided, with the middle-class living at the bottom and the nobles reigning at the top. The upper city escalates upwards, with streets built on top of streets. To reside in the Upper City you need an employment card.
-The Lower City - The lower city consists of methane farms and the acid forests which fuel and feed Section Seven. The methane is burned to power the city, but a side product is the acid rain, which requires constant treatment in the forests to keep food edible. Around quarter of the population live in the Lower City, and almost all of them work in the methane mines or treating the acid forests. Conditions are abysmal and crime is rampant - though if you ever need anything it is the place to go.
-The Under City - The under city powers the city itself. No one resides here, even mechanics only go down one floor in the Under City - the rest is strictly off limits. Methane is guided up from the pipes down here, the mining procedure is controlled from the Lower City.

The Clocktower The only building in all of Section Seven that reaches above the wall, it is also the only clock in the entire city... Or it's supposed to be.

[Any questions and I'll post more details, it's hard to decide what is worth putting in]

Plot:
Necessity is the mother of all invention, and Section Seven is always in need of new technologies. That's where you, students of all ages, come into the equation. At the Allen Turismo University of Science and Engineering the minds of Section Seven are trained to build devices that maximize the efficiency of methane, improve communications within the city, and generally improve the standard of living. The greatest inventors have their lives set for them, and no teacher is better than Professor Quentin Cods. Cods always takes a select group of students and raises them under his thumb, YOU are lucky enough to have been in this group for nearly two years now. At times Cods has pushed you to the limits of university ruling, and sometimes further. He has no limits in technologies. Weapons and gadgets of espionage, power cells, and even hacking equipment has been developed with his guidance - though always dismantled after creation. These kinds of lessons are of course illegal, but you were chosen for your gifts - not your conformity to the law.
The professor has assured you time and time again that the creation of such tools is legal under university supervision, so long as they are destroyed afterwards. All the same, these gadgets were only ever built in a warehouse in the Lower City known as The Retreat under great secrecy... You and your peers have always doubted the sincerity of his claims, but wouldn't give it up for the world.

But recently the professor has been acting erratically, paranoid even... Then two nights ago he disappeared entirely - leaving no trace. The new 'replacement' professor, Prof. Albert Lynx, shows less enthusiasm for engineering and is more interested in whether there is a location Cods ever took you... Of course you didn't tell him about The Retreat, that place is too special.

You and your classmates meet after class and decide to go to The Retreat tonight to see if Cods is hiding there. Something is fishy, and you are determined to find out what... You have no idea what you're getting yourselves into...

Gameplay:
This RP isn't going to flow like a lot of others. You invent every tool you use in the Retreat, and it might take multiple posts. Want to invent something REALLY cool? You'll have to be more active No one invents the strongest weapon by popping into The Retreat once every blue moon. Of course, you can keep your character in The Retreat forever and become skilled, but if you never send your character elsewhere then you won't receive valuable information. This is a Steampunk mystery sci-fi adventure. You have to look for clues, build your own weapons, and uncover every nook and cranny for yourselves. I may PM valuable information if activity slows down, but I'm leaving most of this to you:
The players.
I also want players to be PMing each other and forging relationships off screen, in the RP you have known each other for two years, so you'll have to act like it. Pay attention to everything, if you think someone going somewhere alone is a bad idea then say so... Otherwise I may be inclined to kill them.
This is your old school 'Dungeon Master is out to KIll You' RP. If you're not on your toes then you will die. No do-overs, no new characters. You start with one or two, and you finish with equal to or less than that.
Providing any of you make it to the end...

Sign_up Sheet:
Name:
Age (18+ this is a university):
Appearance:
Biography (This is important, I will be incorporating these into the story):
Behavior:
Talents: (No Jack-of-all Trades, state what you are best at. Here's some optional options: Weapons Engineering, Espionage, Gadgetry Engineering, Combat, Keen Instincts, Intimidation, Pick-pocketing... Yeah just go wild, but try to keep it under 5)
Passions: (Play an instrument? Love animals? Have an obsession for money? Maybe you have a lucky screwdriver)


If anything is poorly explained or you need more information on, don't hesitate to ask. This is a (pretty much) fully written story, so I'm hoping we'll have enough material or guideline to get us all the way to the end.
So yeah, sign ups begin now. Come and become a Student-Steampunk-Engineer-Espionage-Detective-Revolutionary-Terrorist-Agent-Saviour-Person.

Section Seven. Population 500,000 Exactly. <--- This is your first mystery. The rest of the clues will be much better hidden.

Students:
Vayn Harte
Alan McCloud
William Vix
Vincent "Vince" Tarmikon

Sounds interesting enough.

Name: Vayn Harte
Age 19
Appearance: (I kinda want to draw him XD) standing at 6 feet tall, Vayne is casually dressed in a dirty pair of black jeans covered in chemicals from various experiment and a simple blue T shirt with diamond patterned suspenders. His hands have more then their share of scars, and as such are constantly wrapped up and his messy blond hair semi hides a pair of golden (its fake gold) goggles.

Biography: Raised as an orphan in the lower city, Vayne had a hard childhood, till he discouvered his first passion, inventing. He started collecting scrap material from random garbage cans, and pieced together himself a shrapnel launcher. He was discovered by Proffesser Howard K. Harte, who was in a pit of despair, however, upon the profs witnesing of the boys skills, quickly adopted him (more like just took him, but no one cared that one street kid was gone.) Vayne was raised and nurtured as Howard's own son, but was given a little more liniancy than a parent would normally give.

Behavior: Vayne likes playing the odds and trys to double guess how every person and object will react. Arrogant when winning, calculative when lossing. Life is just a game to him. Yet he is very passionate about his work and could be considered a sociopath.

Talents: Gambling, Explossives and Projectile Engineering.

Passions: Playing cards and "testing" explosives.

Perfect sign up
I'm not sure whether it would be fair for me to make a character, seeing as I know all the secrets, but we'll see how many more people are interested. If you have any questions I'd be more than happy to answer (+ It's an excuse to keep this topic active )

Sorry it took so long. Different type of RP, so it took more thought and effort into building a character.

Name: Alan McCloud
Age: 21
Appearance: Alan lacks the refined appearance one would expect from a top class university student. His black hair is always in a mess, as he never brushes it, and bags hang from under his green eyes due to lack of sleep. In terms of attire, his jeans are torn up around the ankles, (almost as if they're the only pair he owns) and his sweater is a rather dull grey.
Biography: Alan was born into an upper middle-class family. He had a rather typical childhood, for a child who was socially awkward. He attended Elementary school, was home-schooled during his junior-high years, and made his way back to High school. His grades were rather average as Alan would rather focus his attention in areas that interested him such as video games, psychoanalyzing classmates. He was last on the acceptance list to the university, barely scrubbing by.
Having applied for the psychology program, Alan is puzzled by his selection into Quentin Cods' personal class.
Behavior: Alan tends to be nosy. He loves gathering information, especially information that's none of his business. Thus he tends to enter certain conversations uninvited. This also translates into his job, as his quest for knowledge has him looking into places he shouldn't. His relationship with knowlege is only one-way however, as Alan stays silent on subjects regarding him personally, sometimes to the frustration of others. He likes to keep things organized, to the point were it could be considered, obsessive compulsive. If one folder in his file-cabinet is sloppily shelved (not misplaced) he will go out his way to fix it.
Talents:
Memory: Above average memory encoding and recall (though not quite photographic)
Finger Dexterity: All those years of computer games has improved Alan's dexterity. While he has no knowledge of how to disarm a bomb, he can certainly keep his hands still to cut the wires if he ever needs to.
Programming: Alan can create AI programs which he often uses for modelling cognition in human behaviour.
Passions: Tabletop RP games, cataloging, psychology.

Acceptamundo
Quick question regarding Alan, with his (almost) photographic memory and dextrous abilities and obsessive nature, would he be able to create machinery from blueprints? If so then congratulations, he is going to do nicely - at least in the beginning anyway.

I think we'll need a few more sign-ups before we're ready to go, I will also be PMing those involved throughout the RP, so be sure to think about your characters whenever you can. The more phobias, family relations, love interests, and hobbies I know about - the easier it is to create an environment that is engaging. So if you think up anything additional about your character, be sure to post it here or in a message to me. I really want to create a dynamic world with this.

If the blueprints are easy enough for Alan to understand, than yes.

And I'll be sure to keep my character in mind. Though I don't have anything I would like to add at the moment. I suppose it will be easier once the RP actually takes off.

QUESTION: not sure if the clocktower is the only method of knowing time, or if people have watches. If they don't, then he's not a watchmaker, but works in an antique shop.

Name: William Vix

Age: 20

Appearance: 5'11" tall, has light brown hair and black eyes, wears a pair of dark blue 3/4 jeans and a short-sleeved grey shirt. Usually carries a black messenger bag with useful gadgets or his school books.

Biography: Born into a middle-class family, his parents died in a disease not long after he entered university. He has a sister, Lily, who suffered a serious and permanent mental trauma when an unknown assiliant robbed her of her money and, most likely, raped her (she refuses to talk about the case). With months of investigation and information-gathering, William managed to find the criminal, an acquaintance of William's, the ex-boyfriend of William's lover, Emma. Lily is now living in an asylum due to a trauma and William works as a watchmaker part-time to ensure her sister gets the best possible treatment.

Behavior: He's usually friendly, helpful and caring, but on the other hand, extremely proud and vain. The smallest sign of someone treating him as inferior to something else pisses him off big-time. When he's angered, he's a spiteful, calculating and ruthless extremist with a magpie-tendency. Often envious and jealous of others' happiness (one of his mottos being "Why should I work on making others feel better when it hurts me all the more to see them happy when I'm not?").

Talents: Free-running (similar to Ezio and Altair's talent from Assassins' creed), bio-engineering (creating stuff that enhances human capabilities such as a gadget worn on the arms that helps lifting heavy objects) and AI building

Passions: sightseeing (he uses this word for climbing buildings and watching the streets from above), collecting things that are rare/shiny/have respected value (such as old coins and medals, prettier pieces of crystallized methane, and all cups, goblets and trophies he can get his hands on), working on his mechanical AI machines, and playing poker.

Took me a while to grab a character out of my box to fit into this, but i think i got someone who'll do the job nicely

Name: Vincent "Vince" Tarmikon

Age: 19

Appearance:

Biography: Born in a high-class family of merchants. Vincent was always spoiled and treated as superior by all of the house servants he lived with. Upon reaching age he was sent off to several private schools, constantly getting kicked out of them for "improper" behaviour, which varied from fights, thefts or improper conduct toward female students. Despite all that, Vince alwasy kept high grades without any trouble. He eventually made his way into the university, although this time he kept himself from his usual trouble since he couldn't afford to be kicked out of this university. Vincent has also lost count of how many girls he's flirted or dated. (Mind you, none of those "relationships" lasted more than a week, mostly due to his fault for never calling back later.)

Behaviour: Vince doesn't really take anything seriously, he's always searching to do new things and visit new places, quickly getting bored of routines. He's quick to make any relationship, be it friendship or something more serious and is just as quick to forget all about them. Vince enjoys the "finest things in life", which is, simply put, money, he'll most likely go out of his way if there's a chance for money to be made. Even though it sometimes seems even accidental, Vince ALWAYS acts flirty when around females.

Talents:
Persuasion, fencing, stealth and keen instincts.

Passions: Obsession for money and women. He also loves fighting, although mostly for the part where he beats up the other person, not the other way around. He's been trying to learn how to play guitar for a few years now as well, although had little sucess.

The Clock tower is the only analogue time keeping device in the city. He could build digital watches, but no watches have been built with moving parts. This is a pivotal part of the plot I'm afraid.

Other than that, both characters are good to go
Let's see if we can't get another one or two and then we're good to go.

Edit: Gonna give this a little bump, see if we can't get more members, and then we'll open it up for business.
I'm also going to wave one of the rules that I thought was a little pointless: The one regarding no new characters entering the game. The class would have at least a dozen people in it, and we don't have that many people RPing, so it makes sense that if (God Forbid) your character should die - you can just take over as one of the other people in the class who suddenly decides to join the team.
It might mess with cohesion a bit but it lets new people join and was an ill thought out rule anyway

I'll put the OP up within the next three days.

Gonna give this a little bump, see if we can't get more members, and then we'll open it up for business.
I'm also going to wave one of the rules that I thought was a little pointless: The one regarding no new characters entering the game. The class would have at least a dozen people in it, and we don't have that many people RPing, so it makes sense that if (God Forbid) your character should die - you can just take over as one of the other people in the class who suddenly decides to join the team.
It might mess with cohesion a bit but it lets new people join and was an ill thought out rule anyway

I'll put the OP up within the next three days.

Edit for Nicsp: Don't think I can merge my posts, but I can copy all the info over from this post to the last and then you can delete this one. I thought 6 days was long enough for a bump, but it doesn't matter now anyway

Huh...It's not letting me delete your post either. I think it's because you're a Local Mod so my powers have no effect on your posts...Oh and don't worry, it's nothing about it being against the rules of bumping or anything, it's completely fine, i'm just a bit of a clean freak and wanted to merge the posts together for the sake of neatness.

Anyways, on-topic. I'm a bit busy with school and some other stuff atm so i won't be able to post just yet. I should have a post up by tommrow afternoon though.

Quite alright then, I've been backed up today so I've only just got online now anyway.
Let's get this show started.

A quick question: is methane mostly the same as real-world methane (CH4, as in, it's gaseous and flammable)?

Yeah. It's sci-fi, so you can screw with physics a little bit, but yeah it's a flammable gas. Any particular reason you ask?

I would like to avoid breaking the canon in case it wasn't the same as real-world methane.

then yes, for all intents and purposes it is exactly the same. Maybe more explosive, but in principle the same.

Just a quick question Sparrow.
Since we are in a Steam-punk setting, just how far has computer-based technology progressed? I completely forgot about that when I mentioned AI and stuff in my profile, and I'd rather correct that now than later.

All the power in the city comes from steam, which comes from evaporating water, which is heated by burning methane. The power itself though is electricity, so computers are entirely possible and so must exist
I'm letting you all have free reign in my story, you can push things as far as you want them to go - so long as it doesn't contradict the canon. So I have no problems with AI, so long as you keep it within reason. I'll let you know when/if you cross the line

The Steampunk is purely that all power comes from steam, and most technology is underdeveloped and improvised. The more important it is to the city - the more powerful the technology involved. The city has no desire to make it's citizens comfortable, there are other problems to deal with. On the surface, it's steam punk. Deeper, cyberpunk. Deeper than that, well, I don't wanna spoil things.

But yeah, as I said, I'll let you know if any of you go too far

Name: Katsumi Yamada
Age: 18

Biography: His parents were students at the university before him and spent all of Katsumi's life readying him for the day he would enroll himself. As most teenagers do, he rebelled against their wishes at first but eventually enrolled after threats of being kicked out of his house. Despite his young age, he is very intelligent due to schooling and extra tutoring his parents forced upon him.
Behavior: Somewhat of a slacker, Katsumi is a dreamer and an idealist. He imagines a better world and uses his talents to help achieve that. While gregarious enough, Katsumi doesn't have very many real friends and can often be found alone outside of class.
Talents: Medicine, Firearms proficiency, Diplomacy
Passions: smoking and Shakespeare

Let me know if there are any problems.

absolutely fine,
Feel free to jump right into an opening post, the RP could do with some activity, I can think of a few ways you could do this but I'll leave it up to you to decide.

Even though activity has died (You guys need more clues or something? ) I'm just dropping in to announce a one week hiatus. I'm going away and there's not much point in posting if I'm not here. You can post, but it won't really get much done.
Hopefully in a week we can get things going again.

Edit: False alarm, I have internet here Now get back to investigating.

I think a majority of people are over at the lecture like they are supposed to be, and are waiting on Prof-what's-his-face.

I've already stated I'm working on the "accurate" watch.

Time skip it is.
Expect Lynx to make his first formal appearance in the RP shortly then. Probably in the next day, depending on how much time I have. He's a key player, so pay attention to what he says that's all I'm saying though.

Regarding the watch, read over Cods' message a few times.

Sparrowsmith stares at the inactive Section Seven thread, wondering why no one is posting

I'd gladly share William's plans as soon as people finished posting where they are. Or if they won't post in a day, I'll proceed anyway. I hope that's all right.

yeah, if people don't bother saying where they are then we'll assume they were in the class, if not then they can say so later. Give it another day then proceed with your plan.

I already stated I'm working in the watch and not over at the class. So really I'm just waiting on everyone else.

Well Satou hasn't been online in 18 days, so it might be a good idea to just continue the RP and hope he shows up soon.

A quick note: I'll be away from tomorrow until the 29th (CET).

Okay. I might get working on an appendix of Section Seven knowledge. It won't be necessary to know, and will be only things your characters would know, but it will be important to your investigations.
It'll just be general things about infrastructure (who the government is, how they are elected, public opinions, hospitals, technology, some history before Section Seven was built, etc)

Just thought I'd check if there's still interest for this. I've been looking over the posts and, well, some of you actually had been asking the right questions and looking in the right places. If there is still interest it's just a matter of instigating the next part