Darksol Serum (Because imprisoned mutants hasn't been done before)

Because RPG is full of lame, fun-hating assholes. Tried to run it there, thinking this would work better with more people, but that didn't happen hahahaha.

Everything smelled like disinfectant and it was so terribly bright.

The poor man, crucified on a stainless steel table (very carefully and very subtly rounded to allow blood to drain off more easily-one must never forget the clean-up when it comes to torture) and whimpering very softly, tried to take in as much of his surroundings as he could. The harsh fluorescent lights kept him from seeing much-he'd been hooded up until this point, and the abrupt change was like staring into the sun.

If the sun smelled like disinfectant.

He pressed against the cold bands that kept his wrists, ankles, hips, and neck firmly attached to the table and eventually gave up. Most did. There was a quiet buzz of white-jackets and bulletproof-vests as they readied themselves for the test, with an even mix of polished black shoes and scarred combat boots alike walking across the tile floor. More than a few watched from the relative safety of the balcony, and a few cameramen who never imagined this as a possible venue for their skills recorded the atrocity. Only four people seemed entirely unperturbed by the chaos around them, comfortably watching the lab rats scurry around. Well, three of them did. The littlest merely played with her teddy and ignored the world around her.

The teddy smelled like disinfectant.

There was a quiet, and the man started to scream. It wasn't unlike the horror movies, where the music grows more and more intense, reaching a crescendo, but you're not worried until it gets quiet. That's when the scary monster jumps out. A few people came over and began swabbing the crook of the man's arm (with, dare I say it, disinfectants) and someone spoke idly into a recorder, a singular voice lost amidst the movement, the subtle click-clicks of rifles being flipped to "FIRE". A few red beams drew upon the man's face and torso, careful to avoid the other personnel in their line of fire.

Someone put a needle to the man's vein, swollen and bulging under the pressure of the elastic band on his bicep, and broke the skin. The man was thrashing, twisting and turning as much as he could, letting out a few blood-chilling screams as the syringe's contents were emptied into his bloodstream. The observers didn't seem too perturbed by it-they were too used to it by this point.

They emptied the needle, and the scientists quickly drew back into the observing rooms, watching their creation unfold from behind the safety of bulletproof glass. The guards inside, vital areas covered with ceramic plates and a Kevlar weave, raised 10 gauge shotguns and machineguns. More red dots danced on the man's chest and torso, but no one put their fingers on the trigger. Not yet. The viewers fell silent, leaving only the agonized whimpers of the test subject to fill the quiet of the sterile, eerie chamber.

Perhaps a minute went by before he got quiet. He started convulsing, foam leaking out of his mouth and his eyes trying to force their way out of his socket. His skin very quickly began to darken and char, as if invisible fires were running up and down his arms and legs. Within a matter of minutes, his tissue began to grow necrotic, eating down to the bone, and some form of foul sludge began dripping off that stainless curved table and draining down into the pipes below. His skin entirely gone (and the sinew on the way out), the man seemed to gain his second wind, struggling at the bonds that held him to the table, pulling his arm out of socket and snapping one of his legs with the force he exerted.

"Open fire."

the voice cut through the screams and the rather awful sound of liquefying flesh. Authority has a way of cutting through the bullsh*t and making itself known; absolute authority even moreso. A moment later, the room was full of thunder, light, and gunpowder as what was left of the subject was further eviscerated. Maybe twenty seconds of sustained gunfire passed before they stopped. The guards, with practiced motions and desensitized professionalism, moved out of the room. HAZMAT suits came rolling in, spraying every possible surface and washing everything down the drain with pressure washers.

After a little while, the gunsmoke was sucked away by the air vents, and the smell of disinfectant came back in.

---

Welcome to DARKSOL SERUM. For those of you looking for something optimistic, full of teamwork and happy endings, why the hell did you keep reading past that first paragraph?

This RP is a twist on the standard "you got amped up on super-power juice" RP. As you may have ascertained, the people being administered the eponymous serum aren't exactly consenting to it. A pretty penny of the DoD's budget is going towards a black site, one whose sole goal is churning out reliable and effective superiority. Imagine not needing to train your soldiers; imagine your homeland being invaded and a few gallons of liquid into the water supply being all you needed. Every man, woman, and child, would be capable of fighting for the cause with more ferocity than warfare has ever seen-and if you could rig it to stop working after a few weeks, you'd have a nice, easily controlled civilian populace afterwards, to boot.

Of course, that's only one side of it. The team that took down Osama bin Laden, the old war heroes like Hathcock and Murphy? Well, they were all great men. But imagine if they hadn't been constrained. Imagine if hours of PT and marksmanship training weren't even necessary. Imagine if you could groom soldiers now and keep them ready to kill for their country decades down the road.

You can see why the Pentagon was willing to put a few trillion into this project.

But, so far, it's turned out...less than stellar results. Owing to the nature of the project, Darksol's testing demands rigid security restrictions. Any threats, any talk of escape, and the subjects have to be taken care of-after everything the US has undergone with the NSA's espionage being leaked, imagine what would happen if this got out. Of course, no word has escaped yet.

Your character will be amongst the latest batch of subjects. What, exactly, the serum has done to you is up to you. Its effects are totally unpredictable-it could cause something entirely beneficial or just mutilate you like the fellow in the OP. However, because I doubt you want to RP as a cadaver, we'll assume you lived through the process. You woke up with only vague, fuzzy memories of what happened in a cell. It's not luxurious, but it's not bad. There's a bed, a toilet, and a grate in the door you get food through. You won't be totally in control of your new abilities yet-remember when you had a growth spurt and you tripped over everything for a week or two until you figured out how your new spine worked? No? That was just me? Well, try and sympathize. Assuming you live past the first tests or two, you'll move towards mastery of your powers.

Oh, yeah. The tests are just getting started. See, they know what the serum can do, but they can't have unpredictable soldiers. They run a plethora of tests (all of which are never reviewed by the ethics board) and analyze what effects the serum has compared to regular people. Does it cause psychosis? Can it be contained, altered, directed? The DoD has no interest in soldiers it can't control-and anyone displaying powers on par with demigods is usually offed before they have a chance to realize what they can do.

You, of course, have several options. You can roll over and die-because, despite what they tell you, there's no way you're walking out of the facility. Play along with the tests until you die in one of them or meet a nastier fate. Alternatively, you could try and break out. Lastly, well, there's always the choice of trying to join the ranks of your oppressors. Jussayin, you might want to stop looking at Stockholm Syndrome in such a negative light for this RP.

I forgot to mention who you'll be tested by! Director of the Darksol Initiative, Doctor Isaiah Steele. Steele is equal parts brilliant and callous. A certified sociopath and wunderkind, he graduated from college more than a few years early, and is pretty close to a Ph.D in most scientific disciplines. He has produced some tangible results for the DoD, but not enough. Pressure is increasing for him to produce results that the government can actually use, and not just a bunch of failures (all of which wind up in urns at the bottom of the sea). So, he's getting a wee bit desperate, unfortunately for you. Assisting him are his three children-Chloe Steele, Olivia Steele, and Drago Steele. You'll learn to hate them soon enough.

You have a great many tools at your disposal. There's raw intellect-not even Isaiah is omniscient. There's a way to outsmart him, if you're conniving enough. Of course, the combined firepower of your fellow subjects would be a match for any military in the world, let alone the contingency the facility can throw at you. More elaborate means exist. Seduction. Manipulation. Blackmail. The Darksol Initiative is full of secrets, many of which will prove useful to you in one way or another.

The only thing for sure is this-if you do nothing, you will die. Whether you want to try and save your fellow prisoners or if you'll throw them to the wolves to save yourself is up to you. I'll set no limits on violence against the other characters-so shank them in the showers or hamstring them in the first experiment if you so choose.

---

Some general points.

1. You are clueless about the facility. The layout, the number of people working there, everything. You were sedated in your own home (or out alone on a walk, so on and so forth) and brought in while unconscious. No vague memories of what the entrance looked like, no fuzzy recollections of how to get out. You'll have to adapt based off of what you learn from navigating the facility, what you can weasel out of the guards, and what the Steele clan lets slip. What details I will give you will be important, and it'll be up to you all to piece them together and figure a way out.

2. You only get one shot. The Darksol Initiative, as you may have noticed, is not living up to any ethics codes. If you speak out against the program, suggest dissent or revolt-hell, if you piss off one of the kids enough-you're liable to be killed. Choose your battles, and choose your chance to try and escape even more carefully. The guards won't hesitate to gun you down if they think you're trying to escape. There are three hundred million other people they can use for this subject-you have no special qualifications.

3. Oh yeah-you have no special qualifications. Remember, they abducted you to get you here. So your character can be good at something, but they can't be famous. You can be a soldier, but you can't be the most decorated soldier in the Army. You can be a scientist, but not a Nobel Prize winner. See, if important people went missing, then people would get suspicious.

4. Your powers come with consequences. Whether it's as simple as not being able to expend energy you don't have or something far more complex, your powers do not come freely. The more powerful your gift, the more severe the cost of using it. Think carefully about your power, and look at what your fellow RP'ers have chosen. You may find that relying on natural wit and trickery will get you further than flashy gifts-or perhaps freedom lies with being able to hurl thunderbolts and move mountains. Regardless, going for Superman-level powers will bring about crippling repercussions. You may find a situational power, or one that requires creativity to employ effectively, to be far more useful than a strictly violent ability.

5. While you may not be as limited as one, you're still human. And so are your captors. Aside from the whole superpowers thing, I'll be enforcing a lot of realism in this RP. If your character is a pyromancer, don't go throwing around fire in a contained room. You'll roast yourself from the inside out. Likewise, you need to portray the human psyche realistically. Stress, fear, hunger, thirst, libido, the need to survive-all of these are very real impulses, and your character should endure them accordingly. Of course, the guards, scientists, and personnel of the facility aren't emotionless, either. You may find psychological warfare more effective than physical combat when it comes to breaking free.

6. Things are going to get really dark. If the OP didn't give that away, I'm aiming for some messed up stuff here. Mature content, violence, sexual content, etc, lies ahead. If you're not down for that, no worries, thanks for reading this far. But in a facility that's hidden from the entire world, one that's effective immune from things like laws or morality, well, a lot of things can happen. Using the darker elements of the facility to your advantage may prove useful, but you may well have to sell your soul to do it.

The Rules.
1. Do not try and "win" this RP. Obviously no one wants their characters to die, but you need to come into this RP expecting that to happen. If you try and set up a rigged character ("No, no, he graduated from med school after he got the Medal of Honor") I'm going to be irritated. Really and truly, you can get out of the facility as a pure human, no powers necessary.
2. On top of the no Mary Sues thing, no godmodding, powerplaying, metagaming, etc. I'll really be enforcing this.
3. I'm going to say autohitting is allowed in SOME instances. If you're standing over someone who's sleeping with a knife, yeah, slit their throat. In some situations, it's fine. However, be courteous. Be realistic in fights, and allow yourself to miss/be hit accordingly.
4. Posts need to be literate and detailed. Hopefully, there's enough going on to allow for plenty of detail, if not, I'm doing my job wrong.
5. Feedback is always welcome. Feel free to PM me suggestions, critiques, ideas, so on and so forth.
6. Again, no restrictions on violence towards the other subjects. If you think it boosts your chances of survival, go for it. There's going to be death in this RP, and it could just as likely come from another subject as it could a guard's shotgun.
7. Cursing, sexual stuff, violence, etc, are all allowed. However, for in-depth detail of sexual stuff, take it to PM's or leave it out. I imagine you won't have too much time to be wooing the opposite sex, however, if Horace Greasely taught us anything...
8. Have fun!

Templates.
When you submit this, be a bro and remove the stuff in parentheses. Detail is good!

Name
Age (Any age is acceptable, however, I'd prefer the 10-70 range)
Sex (M/F. If the experiment has rendered them something in-between or totally devoid of sexual characteristics, give their original sex)
Personality (Morality, beliefs, opinions, sense of humor, what would they bring on a desert island)
Description (What do they look like? Height, weight, gait, how how we talkin here)
Bio (Honestly, I hate bios, so you can keep this short and sweet if you want.)
Skills (What things are they good at? This can range from more professional skills-like accounting-to more abstract things, like "Good at making people laugh")
Fears (The dark, the dentist, and spiders are all a given)
Power (Any good experiment should have a control. So, if you're not feeling superpowers, feel free to be the control.)
Weakness (I'll be filling this out.)
Other (Anything pertinent you left out.)

----

So, what am I up against?

Well, your antagonists can be divvied up into two groups: the Steele family and the average mooks guarding the facility. Of course, the Mooks aren't to be dismissed so readily-given the nature of the project, these guards are all highly trained, heavily compensated, and have some pretty major incentives to do their job well. Attempting to challenge them in a firefight would be akin to taking on a SEAL or a Delta operative-of course, a majority of them are just that. Most possess high-powered weaponry, and keep at least one firearm on their person-riot shotguns and high-caliber submachineguns are popular for the guards operating in close quarters, while the perimeter is guarded by ghillied marksmen wielding .50 cals (and a few have recoilless rifles, because you can't ever be too sure). There are several helicopters assigned to guarding the facility (meaning even if you can fly or teleport or something pesky, you've got a few bothersome flies to swat down before you're in the clear) and a decent contingency of ground vehicles, ranging from Humvees to Jeeps.

In other words, you're in for a hell of a fight if you try and bust out.

Your second group of captors would be the Steele family. Calling them the brains to the facility guards' brawn would be inaccurate, because the Steele family likely matches the mooks in terms of raw firepower. Four of them run the show: patriarch Isaiah Steele, daughters Chloe and Olivia, and son Drago. Each are renowned for differing characteristics and qualities that make their presence miserable. Isaiah approaches his subjects with cold indifference and a drive to understand the serum's capabilities. Olivia, being quite young, is rarely given charge of experiments, but is often present. She's erratic, not entirely in charge of her faculties, and shows more than a few signs of trauma. Drago is lecherous, manipulative, and more than willing to offer safety in an experiment for the services that some of the lovelier subjects can offer. And finally, there's Chloe, who seems to view everyone-her family, the subjects, and the guards alike with equal hatred; misanthropy at its finest. Finding what makes them tick and what you can use to curry favor with the family will prove useful. While the lower-tier guards are unlikely to be swayed, you may find the Steele family far more fickle-perhaps, if a less...volatile...group was in charge of the experiments, results would've been achieved.

For better or for worse.

You'll also find near constant surveillance of what's going on. Cameras are all over the damned place, and you can kiss your privacy goodbye. There is, notably, not much interference with what happens, which has led some to question to what extent the cameras are really monitoring you. Sexual activity, talk of rebellion, violence, etc between prisoners has occurred under a camera's watchful eye and nothing has been done. This could perhaps be a sign of the psychological studies going on or, perhaps, lax behavior on the workers' part.

I mentioned earlier that the facility has a great many secrets. This is certainly true-eavesdropping on the guards, who, professional or no, get bored and talk to each other like guards anywhere, will reveal tons of information. Many quietly discuss the sanity of the Steeles, some of the stranger occurrences of the facility, or other goings-on affecting the project's development. Superstitions are commonplace amongst the guards as well.

I'll be keeping an eye on this.

Oh look at that this is up.

Lol, RPG can really suck sometimes. I wish you good luck. I may not join though, since I may begin my own RP soon. XD, I know, I don't like it when people post in my threads just to tell me they aren't going to be a part of it. But I just wanted to comment,

All good dog. Glad to see some interest!

I forgot to mention, you can run powers by me via PM's before making your whole sheet. I don't want you guys to make a super detailed sheet, then get stuck with a weakness that makes you hate it. (I mean, you're supposed to hate it a little...). Similarly, you can PM me your template to keep things secret from the other inmat volunteers. Multiple characters are allowed-and encouraged, given that the more we have the more I can kill off to keep things exciting.

Also, as always, suggestions and criticisms are always welcome.

Any of you who have been in previous RP's with me are probably aware of the Steele's powers (and perhaps their backstories) but hopefully they're still interesting antagonists.

woop I was waiting for this to come up :3 I have a character in mind I might send to you

Do it. Also, multiple characters are good.

If anyone wants any more detail on my characters, I'll have some in the OP. I can answer any questions your character has based off stuff they can observe, like what are the walls and floor made of, what kinda stuff are the guards carrying, etc.

It's official, DB's character is the cutest. Or if not, make her and the young Steele girl arm wrestle for the title. It will be the most adorable match ever.

DB's character is adorable as hell, agreed. Livvy and Belle will probably wind up watching Frozen instead of doing actual tests.

The Real Shade wrote:

DB's character is adorable as hell, agreed. Livvy and Belle will probably wind up watching Frozen instead of doing actual tests.

Livvy: "Today we're going to test your- EEEEEEEEK I LOVE YOUR HAIR!!! CAN I BRAID IT???

There isn't really any "beating" here, but if you want to think that way, Shade "beat" you well over three years ago. Darksol Serum is a long-running series.

Replied to your Pm, Night!

I'm going to wait for a few more characters before I get started-the more people we have, the better this RP will work, I think.

I don't have anymore character ideas at the moment, but I do think I might rehash an older one.

Still hoping for a few more people to join this, but I don't want interest to dwindle.

Also, about Isaiah's speech...

Spoiler:

MY BODY IS READY


I'll get in a post later. I'm in the middle of another post atm.

NO EXCUSES

omg Im having Belle compliment Livvy's light up shoes

And with that, Belle's survival was ensured

So far ive had Belle refer to her cell as a room and the serum as syrup. Off to a cute start

We're now engaged in an adorable-off, I see

Were this real life, I'm afraid you'd lose. I can rock some Hello Kitty merch like you wouldn't believe.

Damn

I like where this is going.

Yay.

For realsies, I don't have a ton of experience as a GM, so any complaints/suggestions, send them my way. I'll only kill off your character if I'm offended.

First experiment is mostly for your characters to figure out their powers and have some fun team-building exercises.

EDIT: Also, Patches, I'm pretty sure that's Peter's interpretation of the situation and not yours, but Livvy added the Disney question when nobody was paying attention to the tablets, haha, although I do like the idea of that being a very serious, psychoanalysis-type question.

And Livvy, Chloe, and Drago are all still present with the group, Lone, they've just quieted down and are letting them work stuff out. The other guards did leave, though