![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Application
Aug. 17th, 2014 12:59 amPlayer name: Terra
AIM contact: tormterra
Alternate contacts:
Character name: Alexandra de Witt
Source canon: Sacred 40 (OC)
Community tag: Alexandra de Witt
Do I want a HMD: Already have one
Notes:
Background:
The daughter of a successful antiquities dealer in Antwerp, Alex had a generally happy, fairly normal upper class childhood. Surrounded by the exotic products of the long, varied past of humanity she grew to have an interest and affection for the past and its material culture, even as she gradually also came to realize that her father's dealing weren't quite above the board. While many of the objects that passed through his office and his home were ordinary, a number were also things that further knowledge of the matter revealed as clear contraband, such as African fetishes stolen by missionaries, Etruscan grave goods or loot from the Chinese summer palace.
One particular item, however, was of special note. While Alex was still only a kid, her father got his hand on a unique, Sumerian alabaster pendant in the shape the snake double-helix, the symbol of the god Enki. However, when he tried to sell it, the expert doing the appraisal determined it to be fake due to a lack of markings of the primitive tools that would have been used to carve it at the time. Unable to find the original seller and unable to earn money on it either, he instead decided to gift it to his daughter as a special, unique thing even if it wasn't actually ancient and valuable.
Upon graduating high school, Alex went down one of the obvious paths laid out by her interests and background, turning to the study of archeology, picking the most traditional route and the study of ancient Greece at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Still a student, she recently started her master's degree.
Original canon background:
While their exact origins and nature are lost to the mists of time and their own arrogance, at heart the Sumerian gods are real and at least some of the myths about them are too, even if they probably created neither the world nor humanity. Regardless of metaphysical matters that will likely pique the interest of the more philosophically inclined of those who learn about their existence, what matters is that the myth of Atrahasis has roots in actual truth. The Sumerian version of the universal flood myth, the story holds that the head of the gods, Enlil, had come to the conclusion that humans were too numerous and wanted to purge the world of the species by drowning them all in a great flood, while the wise god Enki disagreed. Unable to sway Enlil and without the power to stand up to him directly, Enki sought out the man Atrahasis and warned him of the impending flood and taught him how to build a great ship on which to take refuge with his family, servants and animals. When this came to Enlil's attention, he was furious with Enki, dragging him before him to answer to this insubordination.
With the possibility of using the flood foiled, the two debated the matter, Enlil trying to assert his authority and Enki defending the sanctity of the life of an entire species. In the end, a compromise was reached that seemed to favor Enlil greatly, while simply letting Enki get off with his pride intact. Each would choose a champion, Enki a human and Enlil a god, demon or abstract concept, to compete at regular intervals. Should Enki's champion win, humanity would live. Should Enlil's the species would be purged as part of the plan.
Realizing the obvious inequality in power between humans and gods and how trivially easy it would be for someone like Ishtar or Ninursag to kill any human without so much as batting an eye, Enki considered the issue for years on end before finally coming to the conclusion. If the power of a god was so much greater than that of a human, the obvious solution would be to endow his champion with the powers of a god. In order to do this and secure the survival of humanity, Enki decided to give up his own existence to imbue his power in a pendant given to his priesthood.
Since then the cycle has turned several times, each time leading to victory for humanity, though often at the slimmest of margins. The Sumerian civilization is long dead, as are its Akkadian successors and Enki's priesthood is gone. Instead the last several instances of the cycle has been i the hands of random people whose hand the pendant had come into, which means a motley group of thieves, grave robbers, curiosity collectors and similar. Yet, as it is indestructible and possesses great artistic quality, it has never failed to come into the hands of somebody and so there never was a cycle without a champion.
Constantly humiliated by defeat and furious that his plan to subvert Enki's opposition failed, Enlil has finally come to the conclusion that since Enki had for all intents and purposes cheated, so could he. The cycle wasn't meant to come up for several centuries more, yet he has already prepared his champion in trying to assassinate the current holder of the pendant before its too late and started preparing backup just in case it should fail.
Unrelated to gods or Sumerians, the simmering ethnic conflict in Belgium has started boiling over again during the tumultuous recent decades. One group in particular has been trying to spur the conflict, the Flemish terrorist organization Vlaams Leger has been building notoriety after a number of bombings and assassinations. In recent years they have scaled up their operations considerably, having received covert funding from the NUNE as an attempt at destabilizing their enemies among the nations of the ESUN. As such, they have recently begun employing actual mecha of various kinds in their attacks, managing to raise far more attention for themselves and their cause in the process. Still, so far the Belgian state remains standing and rejecting giving in to terrorism, leaving them more effective at killing than they are at actually enforcing their desires.
Personality:
If somebody was to expect a graduate student to be a bookish nerdy type, they'd be somewhat surprised should they meet Alex. While she's obviously quite well-educated in general and has an interest in ancient history and artifacts in particular, she's not particularly inclined to read beyond what she needs for school nor does she have classic nerdy interests. Instead she focuses on much more mainstream interests such as spectator sports, where she can get quite worked up during a match, going out on the weekend or enjoying vacations to exotic locations.
A generally friendly, easygoing person she can sometimes act a bit immature when matters aren't too serious, often strike a pose of light teasing or mock self-importance. This comes from a fundamental confidence bred by her stable, happy background and lack of need to truly assert or protect herself from problems. Even so, she does have the emotional maturity to recognize when matters are more serious and to respond in an appropriate fashion, rather than to try to puff herself up or making jabs at something that shouldn't be made fun about. This is especially true when it's other people's problems rather than her own, the latter she'll often treat with a bit more levity rather than brood or be overly serious about them.
Yet, for all this, she's fully aware of the responsibility that has fallen into her lab through Enki. Even ignoring the specific conflict between Sumerian gods, she still holds a powerful weapon in her hands that she can't give up to others. There is a clear and obvious responsibility in that given the situation Earth is in and while she didn't ask for it, trying to just deny it would be an insult to those already fighting and a disservice to others. She still isn't quite ready to turn to being a full time soldier facing other humans just yet, that will have to wait until plot-induced character development.
She also has a complicated relationship with her family. While she has happy memories of her childhood and even her teenage years talking about strange and wondrous items with her father, the relationship is fundamentally tainted by an ideological conflict. She's a firm believe in the professional ethics of her chosen field of education and her father is ultimately transgressing against those, leading to constant heated discussions between the two over the proper treatment of archeological artifacts whenever they meet. She still hasn't quite sorted out what to feel about all this or how to properly respond.
Capabilities and Resources: Nothing beyond the skills of a normal, relatively well-educated and affluent woman in her early 20s.
Type: Combatant
Unit Name: Enki
Unit Description:
Alex' unit is the Sumerian god Enki, or rather what's left of him after he gave up his power to take on a form that humans could use. No longer sentient, the mecha that used to be Enki is a magical construct residing in Alex' pendant, only appearing when she directly summons it rather than continuously present. Despite the lack of sentience, upon its first activation it imparts basic information on how to voluntarily call upon its powers in the future, how to pilot it and Enki and Enlil's feud, but that's as far as its ability to directly influence its pilot goes.
When called forth, Enki appears as a giant, vaguely masculine figure made of an unknown metal that shimmers like water and moves with a fluidity unlike actual metal. While its face is indistinct, it wears a crown carrying the curved horns of a goat and has the distinct square beard of its culture of origin. Its body is covered in the design of a scaled suit of armor, though not actually capable of being removed from the robot itself or seeming to restrict its movements. A cloak of water streams from its shoulders, evaporating just before hitting the ground while not actually affecting its surroundings like constantly streaming water like that would.
Despite its nature as a summoned construct, it can still take damage which remains until it's dismissed, revealing an internal structure similar to that of a human, but without the gory details. The cockpit is located at the upper end of the torso, around where the heart would be on an actual person. After getting dismissed, Enki cannot be summoned again until it finishes repairing the damage it has taken, a slow process that could take days or even weeks depending on the severity and there's nothing either Alex, nor anybody else can do to speed it up.
Rather than weaponry in a conventional sense, Enki has two strong, versatile powers. One is the ability to summon and control water, the other is alchemical transmutation of objects it holds in its hands. Each have their limitations, however. Summoned water is as transitory as the cloak on Enki's shoulders and while it can be used for things such as vortices to deflect attacks or highly powered jets of water capable of cutting steel, it can't do more elaborate effects that need setting up. Controlled water, on the other hand is limited by available local water and takes some time and concentration to do more than getting tossed around with brute force.
The alchemical transmutation on the other hand has great versatility, but is limited by the actual chemical composition of the materials used. While coal can be crushed into diamonds, it can't be turned into wood or metal and a car couldn't be turned into something stronger or more durable than the metal the frame and body is made from. It also requries that Enki physically touches the object to be changed and that the pilot concentrates on the effect. Within these limitations, however, much can be done with the power as long as the pilot has the knowledge, creativity and willingness to destroy objects around them to make the most use of it.
Size: M
Terrain compatibility:
Air: -
Ground: A
Water: S
Space: A
Favored terrain: Water
Upgrades: None
Wingmen: None
Mission requirement: Alex doesn't appear until after her first mission.
Suggested Event List:
1. During an unrelated battle Alex gets caught somewhere near the battlefield or possibly even on it, depending on how messy the evacuation is. A short while later, a large monstrous beast and a small army of rocklike monsters appear seemingly out of nowhere and head towards her, not caring about collateral damage. Her amulet responds by giving her knowledge of how to draw upon its power to fight back, both the practical issue of calling upon it and the basics of how to pilot the giant magical construct Enki turns into. She also gains the basic knowledge of the challenges between Enki and Enlil, but doesn't learn that this isn't just an ordinary turn of the cycle. An urban battle at her home in Brussels would be the obvious thing to go with, but if it works better for other canons at a dig at a Greek archeological site or somewhere she might go for vacation works as well. Alex is not very practiced using Enki yet and her piloting will show that, likely damaging surrounding buildings as she fights.
Enemies: Asag, Asag's rock spawn
2. Adèle Romilly, an expert on Mesopotamian mythology, gets kidnapped by Vlaams Leger at some point after the first mission. After the first mission gets reported on the news and the collective power of experts and online nerds get on the case the Mesopotamian tie becomes pretty accepted, providing the possibility that the terrorists are trying to get their hands on power like Enki, Humbaba or Asag. The mission is to free him from terrorists. Alex joins the mission because it ties to her, even if it means fighting other humans. Once there it becomes clear that Vlaams Leger are aware of the power assymetry and will play dirty such as taking hostages, hiding in crowded areas and similar to protect themselves against superior firepower. The mission will still succeed in saving Adèle unless the players screw up greatly, the terrorists believe they need her after all.
Enemies: Various mass produced mook units
3. Ultimately a small thing that should be added as a side thing to a more substantial mission from another canon. During another mission, Humbaba arrives to challenge Alex revealing that something major is up with the cycle of Enki and Enlil's fight given that more people fight on Enlil's behalf. Nothing major here, just a fight to reveal that things aren't as simple as they'd appeared.
Enemies: Humbaba
4. After a failed attempt at assassinating the Belgian royal family in their home at Coudenberg in Brussels, the attackers from Vlaams Leger have holed up in the nearby museum of fine arts and have taken both the visitors and the displayed works hostage. Surrounded by police forces they have made their demands for releasing the hostages are simple: Free passage to escape and Alex' pendant. Thanks to Alex' presence, Unity Group is called on for dealing with it, though of course, there is still a stand-off with a real risk to turn into a repeat of the attack on that hotel in Mumbai. When they set a deadline, she volunteers to turn herself over to the terrorists as a hostage to keep them from getting attacked until they escape, summoning Enki at the first sign of danger or as soon as they're in a place where fighting won't endanger innocents. Doing so obviously starts an actual fight and the rest of Unity Group will have to step in to help.
Enemies: Assorted higher end mass-produced units aimed at succeeding at their most ambitious mission.
5. Vlaams Leger aren't giving up yet, having the bulk of their fighting power broken and the government far more determined to root them out after recent spectacular attacks. Gethering their remaining forces, they focus their efforts on making Alex work for them as a desperate attempt at restoring relevance and to that end assault her father to take him hostage to blackmail her into serving them. During the negotiations things can go in a few different ways. If somebody has a good plan to separate the hostage from those aiming at him and extracting him, he can be saved, while gung-ho players can get him killed to prove they mean business after which they run away. After a bit Ishtar and Ninurta show up and if the hostage is still held hostage, Ishtar's aura makes one of the terrorists kill him. Regardless, it turns into a five way brawl between hyper-aggressive terrorists, Mesopotamian gods and Unity Group.
Enemies: Various mass produced mook units, including one piloted by Pieter de Klerk himself, and Ishtar and Ninurta in the second.
6. Götterdämmerung Tired for the failures of servants and monsters, Enlil himself takes the field to defeat Enki and humanity's defenders on his own. In his arrogance he doesn't bring any allies or minions, instead trusting in his command of wind, weather and spatial dimensions to carry the day for him. After a long, brutal battle him where Enki is severely damaged and Enlil moves to take down his ancient enemy and the human riding within him up close and personally to gloat. That is when Alex finally takes everything she's got to push Enki's powers over water and alchemy to their limit together with the knowledge gained from modern science to turn a nearby body of water into an impromptu fusion bomb. Enlil is killed and Enki is destroyed in the process, with Alex being left severely injured, though nothing she can't recover from, rather than permanently crippled.
Enemies: Enlil
Sample post: Testrun here
Canon enemies:
Asag: A giant, bestial creature possessing both reptilian and mammalian features, Asag operates on a scale corresponding to large mecha. Walking on its six, clawed legs its covered by a strange mix of fur and scales, displaying both reptilian and mammalian features in its general shape and look. More notably, it has no true head, it's body instead just ending in a gaping maw dripping slime where the head should be. Its appearance is supernaturally repulsive making it hard to put your all into fighting or defending against him if you look directly at him, weakening the potency of attacks and defense. Of course, looking away makes hitting that much harder. This effect is potent enough that his mere presence boils the fish in nearby river, lakes and oceans alive. In battle it fights using a mix of brute, physical force and spitting noxious bile.
In battle Asag is accompanied by its offspring, quadroped rock creatures at the size of small mecha such as Arm Slaves. Moving at disturbing speeds for big, lumbering rocks, they mostly attack by swarming and trying to crush enemies under their weight or slamming directly into them with their full bulk.
Humbaba: A giant, bestial creature humbaba towers over most buildings and mecha, even walking around on all four legs. A scaled beast with large, clawed paws, its face is a grotesque, pulsating swirl looking like the entrails of an animal, though they're capable of opening into a fanged mouth. It's tail also ends in the head of a snake. In addition to swipes from its claws or biting, it can roar with the force to shatter buildings and knock at least directly targeted mecha aside as well as fire breath. To make matters worse it has superlative hearing, making it that much harder to sneak up on it in some way and acidic blood eating away at any that damages it. Humbaba is protected by its seven auras and cannot be defeated until they're stripped away. Accepting a gift strips away an aura. Thankfully, the beast is greedy and will accept anything offered as a gift with at least a minor flourish in presenting it.
Ishtar: Appearing as a kaiju-sized, feral woman with claws and a lion-head, Ishtar fights by physically tearing into her enemies and enjoying the thrill of savaging and ruining them. While an intelligent, sentient being Ishtar relishes in bloodshed and savagery and is eager to make use of the opportunity to go to Earth to indulge in her whims without restraint. That does not mean she'll fight like an idiot or want things to get cut short by being beaten down by enemies, it might not kill her but it still hurts, causes embarrassment to the other gods and ends her killing spree. Her very presence causes the emotions of others to start to boil over, spurring them towards greater aggression, violence and impulsivity, even if it doesn't go so far as to override basic identity and loyalty.
Ninurta: A figure as large as Ishtar, Ninurta presents both a more human and civilized appearance, looking like a winged man with a wild mane of hair and the hindlegs of a lion instead of those of a human, along with the mandatory square beard. He carries his giant, talking mace Sharur which he uses with expert proficiency against his enemies, while also using his powers to mend both his own and Ishtar's wounds in battle. People who expect him to be limited to melee due to his choice of a mace as a weapon will be sorely disappointed to learn that he can throw it with perfect accuracy over even extreme distances and have it return to his hand. His demeanor is much more controlled and sensible than Ishtar's, but he is no less determined to fight and win to avoid losing face to the other gods or let his father down.
Enlil: The king of the gods himself is an arrogant, self-assured fighter. He's the king of the gods and have ruled for untold millennia with none other than Enki daring to challenge his power. This arrogance also leads him to take the field alone, refusing to acknowledge humans, even ones armed with powerful magic and technology and Enki himself, as a true threat to him, rather than simply gnats for him to crush. As the god of wind, the weather and distance, he fights with the ability to bend space in responce to attacks or to cause his enemies to attack each other, along with the ability to summon weather such as powerful thunderstorms, hurricanes or tornados and dismissing them again according to his needs. Unlike his subordinate deities, Enlil looks fully like a regal, but arrogant human wearing ancient Mesopotamian clothing and the customary beard. What size he appears as depends on what suits his needs, refusing to be bound by petty spatial dimensions like his lessers.
Vlaams Leger terrorists: As the name and affiliation suggests, they're fanatical Flemish nationalists who fully buy into the idea that the Belgian nation is an unnatural construct imposed on their people by foreign imperialism and fully willing to even kill innocents to correct that. In battle they're not a professional army for good and ill, on the good side they're not as accomplished pilots or as used to actual military tactics as real armies, on the negative side they have no respect for things like the Geneva Convention or civilian losses. They're also fully willing to use the self-destruct function of their mecha should escape become impossible.
NPCs:
Kasper de Witt: Alex' father is a rich, self-possessed man in his early 50s. Despite his corruption and willingness to earn a profit on priceless artifacts, he still has a deep passion for and knowledge about art, archeological artifacts and similar. He reconciles this by believing that all the various attempts at "respecting" them are just giving in to arbitrary political distinctions of the day and that what he does is no worse. He's still somewhat angry at his daughter for their recent fights and while he wants reconciliation, he isn't going to just renounce his ways should he be saved, they come from internally consistent beliefs and have no relation to his recent predicament after all. He'll still mostly focus on being thankful should he be saved. All this is mostly only going to come up if he survives, though. During the mission he'll avoid panicking and stay as calm as possible in the face of being held hostage, which isn't completely so but doing pretty well at it.
Adèle Romilly: In her late 30s, Adèle is a tenured professor at the archeology department of Université Libre de Brussel and one of the foremost experts of Mesopotamian myth in the world. Contrary to most stereotypes of university employees, she's a worldly woman keeping in touch with ordinary society and how to properly dress and present herself. She's somewhat rattled by the experience of getting abducted by terrorists, especially how they ask her for something that's frankly insane. During the mission, she'll keep her head down and try not to get caught in crossfire or provoke Vlaams Leger to kill her.
Pieter de Klerk: Approaching his middle ages and starting to grow fat, Pieter de Klerk is not a physically imposing figure, he is, however, a talented and charismatic leader who build Vlaams Leger from its humble beginnings. He's fully convinced of his cause, but also quite fond of the privileges of having a large group of loyal followers even while having gone underground as a wanted man. Not actually a very capable pilot, he's still using the best unit that Vlaams Leger has left and relies on his followers to shield him as he tries to escape a physical confrontation so that he may rebuild his organization.
AIM contact: tormterra
Alternate contacts:
Character name: Alexandra de Witt
Source canon: Sacred 40 (OC)
Community tag: Alexandra de Witt
Do I want a HMD: Already have one
Notes:
Background:
The daughter of a successful antiquities dealer in Antwerp, Alex had a generally happy, fairly normal upper class childhood. Surrounded by the exotic products of the long, varied past of humanity she grew to have an interest and affection for the past and its material culture, even as she gradually also came to realize that her father's dealing weren't quite above the board. While many of the objects that passed through his office and his home were ordinary, a number were also things that further knowledge of the matter revealed as clear contraband, such as African fetishes stolen by missionaries, Etruscan grave goods or loot from the Chinese summer palace.
One particular item, however, was of special note. While Alex was still only a kid, her father got his hand on a unique, Sumerian alabaster pendant in the shape the snake double-helix, the symbol of the god Enki. However, when he tried to sell it, the expert doing the appraisal determined it to be fake due to a lack of markings of the primitive tools that would have been used to carve it at the time. Unable to find the original seller and unable to earn money on it either, he instead decided to gift it to his daughter as a special, unique thing even if it wasn't actually ancient and valuable.
Upon graduating high school, Alex went down one of the obvious paths laid out by her interests and background, turning to the study of archeology, picking the most traditional route and the study of ancient Greece at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Still a student, she recently started her master's degree.
Original canon background:
While their exact origins and nature are lost to the mists of time and their own arrogance, at heart the Sumerian gods are real and at least some of the myths about them are too, even if they probably created neither the world nor humanity. Regardless of metaphysical matters that will likely pique the interest of the more philosophically inclined of those who learn about their existence, what matters is that the myth of Atrahasis has roots in actual truth. The Sumerian version of the universal flood myth, the story holds that the head of the gods, Enlil, had come to the conclusion that humans were too numerous and wanted to purge the world of the species by drowning them all in a great flood, while the wise god Enki disagreed. Unable to sway Enlil and without the power to stand up to him directly, Enki sought out the man Atrahasis and warned him of the impending flood and taught him how to build a great ship on which to take refuge with his family, servants and animals. When this came to Enlil's attention, he was furious with Enki, dragging him before him to answer to this insubordination.
With the possibility of using the flood foiled, the two debated the matter, Enlil trying to assert his authority and Enki defending the sanctity of the life of an entire species. In the end, a compromise was reached that seemed to favor Enlil greatly, while simply letting Enki get off with his pride intact. Each would choose a champion, Enki a human and Enlil a god, demon or abstract concept, to compete at regular intervals. Should Enki's champion win, humanity would live. Should Enlil's the species would be purged as part of the plan.
Realizing the obvious inequality in power between humans and gods and how trivially easy it would be for someone like Ishtar or Ninursag to kill any human without so much as batting an eye, Enki considered the issue for years on end before finally coming to the conclusion. If the power of a god was so much greater than that of a human, the obvious solution would be to endow his champion with the powers of a god. In order to do this and secure the survival of humanity, Enki decided to give up his own existence to imbue his power in a pendant given to his priesthood.
Since then the cycle has turned several times, each time leading to victory for humanity, though often at the slimmest of margins. The Sumerian civilization is long dead, as are its Akkadian successors and Enki's priesthood is gone. Instead the last several instances of the cycle has been i the hands of random people whose hand the pendant had come into, which means a motley group of thieves, grave robbers, curiosity collectors and similar. Yet, as it is indestructible and possesses great artistic quality, it has never failed to come into the hands of somebody and so there never was a cycle without a champion.
Constantly humiliated by defeat and furious that his plan to subvert Enki's opposition failed, Enlil has finally come to the conclusion that since Enki had for all intents and purposes cheated, so could he. The cycle wasn't meant to come up for several centuries more, yet he has already prepared his champion in trying to assassinate the current holder of the pendant before its too late and started preparing backup just in case it should fail.
Unrelated to gods or Sumerians, the simmering ethnic conflict in Belgium has started boiling over again during the tumultuous recent decades. One group in particular has been trying to spur the conflict, the Flemish terrorist organization Vlaams Leger has been building notoriety after a number of bombings and assassinations. In recent years they have scaled up their operations considerably, having received covert funding from the NUNE as an attempt at destabilizing their enemies among the nations of the ESUN. As such, they have recently begun employing actual mecha of various kinds in their attacks, managing to raise far more attention for themselves and their cause in the process. Still, so far the Belgian state remains standing and rejecting giving in to terrorism, leaving them more effective at killing than they are at actually enforcing their desires.
Personality:
If somebody was to expect a graduate student to be a bookish nerdy type, they'd be somewhat surprised should they meet Alex. While she's obviously quite well-educated in general and has an interest in ancient history and artifacts in particular, she's not particularly inclined to read beyond what she needs for school nor does she have classic nerdy interests. Instead she focuses on much more mainstream interests such as spectator sports, where she can get quite worked up during a match, going out on the weekend or enjoying vacations to exotic locations.
A generally friendly, easygoing person she can sometimes act a bit immature when matters aren't too serious, often strike a pose of light teasing or mock self-importance. This comes from a fundamental confidence bred by her stable, happy background and lack of need to truly assert or protect herself from problems. Even so, she does have the emotional maturity to recognize when matters are more serious and to respond in an appropriate fashion, rather than to try to puff herself up or making jabs at something that shouldn't be made fun about. This is especially true when it's other people's problems rather than her own, the latter she'll often treat with a bit more levity rather than brood or be overly serious about them.
Yet, for all this, she's fully aware of the responsibility that has fallen into her lab through Enki. Even ignoring the specific conflict between Sumerian gods, she still holds a powerful weapon in her hands that she can't give up to others. There is a clear and obvious responsibility in that given the situation Earth is in and while she didn't ask for it, trying to just deny it would be an insult to those already fighting and a disservice to others. She still isn't quite ready to turn to being a full time soldier facing other humans just yet, that will have to wait until plot-induced character development.
She also has a complicated relationship with her family. While she has happy memories of her childhood and even her teenage years talking about strange and wondrous items with her father, the relationship is fundamentally tainted by an ideological conflict. She's a firm believe in the professional ethics of her chosen field of education and her father is ultimately transgressing against those, leading to constant heated discussions between the two over the proper treatment of archeological artifacts whenever they meet. She still hasn't quite sorted out what to feel about all this or how to properly respond.
Capabilities and Resources: Nothing beyond the skills of a normal, relatively well-educated and affluent woman in her early 20s.
Type: Combatant
Unit Name: Enki
Unit Description:
Alex' unit is the Sumerian god Enki, or rather what's left of him after he gave up his power to take on a form that humans could use. No longer sentient, the mecha that used to be Enki is a magical construct residing in Alex' pendant, only appearing when she directly summons it rather than continuously present. Despite the lack of sentience, upon its first activation it imparts basic information on how to voluntarily call upon its powers in the future, how to pilot it and Enki and Enlil's feud, but that's as far as its ability to directly influence its pilot goes.
When called forth, Enki appears as a giant, vaguely masculine figure made of an unknown metal that shimmers like water and moves with a fluidity unlike actual metal. While its face is indistinct, it wears a crown carrying the curved horns of a goat and has the distinct square beard of its culture of origin. Its body is covered in the design of a scaled suit of armor, though not actually capable of being removed from the robot itself or seeming to restrict its movements. A cloak of water streams from its shoulders, evaporating just before hitting the ground while not actually affecting its surroundings like constantly streaming water like that would.
Despite its nature as a summoned construct, it can still take damage which remains until it's dismissed, revealing an internal structure similar to that of a human, but without the gory details. The cockpit is located at the upper end of the torso, around where the heart would be on an actual person. After getting dismissed, Enki cannot be summoned again until it finishes repairing the damage it has taken, a slow process that could take days or even weeks depending on the severity and there's nothing either Alex, nor anybody else can do to speed it up.
Rather than weaponry in a conventional sense, Enki has two strong, versatile powers. One is the ability to summon and control water, the other is alchemical transmutation of objects it holds in its hands. Each have their limitations, however. Summoned water is as transitory as the cloak on Enki's shoulders and while it can be used for things such as vortices to deflect attacks or highly powered jets of water capable of cutting steel, it can't do more elaborate effects that need setting up. Controlled water, on the other hand is limited by available local water and takes some time and concentration to do more than getting tossed around with brute force.
The alchemical transmutation on the other hand has great versatility, but is limited by the actual chemical composition of the materials used. While coal can be crushed into diamonds, it can't be turned into wood or metal and a car couldn't be turned into something stronger or more durable than the metal the frame and body is made from. It also requries that Enki physically touches the object to be changed and that the pilot concentrates on the effect. Within these limitations, however, much can be done with the power as long as the pilot has the knowledge, creativity and willingness to destroy objects around them to make the most use of it.
Size: M
Terrain compatibility:
Air: -
Ground: A
Water: S
Space: A
Favored terrain: Water
Upgrades: None
Wingmen: None
Mission requirement: Alex doesn't appear until after her first mission.
Suggested Event List:
1. During an unrelated battle Alex gets caught somewhere near the battlefield or possibly even on it, depending on how messy the evacuation is. A short while later, a large monstrous beast and a small army of rocklike monsters appear seemingly out of nowhere and head towards her, not caring about collateral damage. Her amulet responds by giving her knowledge of how to draw upon its power to fight back, both the practical issue of calling upon it and the basics of how to pilot the giant magical construct Enki turns into. She also gains the basic knowledge of the challenges between Enki and Enlil, but doesn't learn that this isn't just an ordinary turn of the cycle. An urban battle at her home in Brussels would be the obvious thing to go with, but if it works better for other canons at a dig at a Greek archeological site or somewhere she might go for vacation works as well. Alex is not very practiced using Enki yet and her piloting will show that, likely damaging surrounding buildings as she fights.
Enemies: Asag, Asag's rock spawn
2. Adèle Romilly, an expert on Mesopotamian mythology, gets kidnapped by Vlaams Leger at some point after the first mission. After the first mission gets reported on the news and the collective power of experts and online nerds get on the case the Mesopotamian tie becomes pretty accepted, providing the possibility that the terrorists are trying to get their hands on power like Enki, Humbaba or Asag. The mission is to free him from terrorists. Alex joins the mission because it ties to her, even if it means fighting other humans. Once there it becomes clear that Vlaams Leger are aware of the power assymetry and will play dirty such as taking hostages, hiding in crowded areas and similar to protect themselves against superior firepower. The mission will still succeed in saving Adèle unless the players screw up greatly, the terrorists believe they need her after all.
Enemies: Various mass produced mook units
3. Ultimately a small thing that should be added as a side thing to a more substantial mission from another canon. During another mission, Humbaba arrives to challenge Alex revealing that something major is up with the cycle of Enki and Enlil's fight given that more people fight on Enlil's behalf. Nothing major here, just a fight to reveal that things aren't as simple as they'd appeared.
Enemies: Humbaba
4. After a failed attempt at assassinating the Belgian royal family in their home at Coudenberg in Brussels, the attackers from Vlaams Leger have holed up in the nearby museum of fine arts and have taken both the visitors and the displayed works hostage. Surrounded by police forces they have made their demands for releasing the hostages are simple: Free passage to escape and Alex' pendant. Thanks to Alex' presence, Unity Group is called on for dealing with it, though of course, there is still a stand-off with a real risk to turn into a repeat of the attack on that hotel in Mumbai. When they set a deadline, she volunteers to turn herself over to the terrorists as a hostage to keep them from getting attacked until they escape, summoning Enki at the first sign of danger or as soon as they're in a place where fighting won't endanger innocents. Doing so obviously starts an actual fight and the rest of Unity Group will have to step in to help.
Enemies: Assorted higher end mass-produced units aimed at succeeding at their most ambitious mission.
5. Vlaams Leger aren't giving up yet, having the bulk of their fighting power broken and the government far more determined to root them out after recent spectacular attacks. Gethering their remaining forces, they focus their efforts on making Alex work for them as a desperate attempt at restoring relevance and to that end assault her father to take him hostage to blackmail her into serving them. During the negotiations things can go in a few different ways. If somebody has a good plan to separate the hostage from those aiming at him and extracting him, he can be saved, while gung-ho players can get him killed to prove they mean business after which they run away. After a bit Ishtar and Ninurta show up and if the hostage is still held hostage, Ishtar's aura makes one of the terrorists kill him. Regardless, it turns into a five way brawl between hyper-aggressive terrorists, Mesopotamian gods and Unity Group.
Enemies: Various mass produced mook units, including one piloted by Pieter de Klerk himself, and Ishtar and Ninurta in the second.
6. Götterdämmerung Tired for the failures of servants and monsters, Enlil himself takes the field to defeat Enki and humanity's defenders on his own. In his arrogance he doesn't bring any allies or minions, instead trusting in his command of wind, weather and spatial dimensions to carry the day for him. After a long, brutal battle him where Enki is severely damaged and Enlil moves to take down his ancient enemy and the human riding within him up close and personally to gloat. That is when Alex finally takes everything she's got to push Enki's powers over water and alchemy to their limit together with the knowledge gained from modern science to turn a nearby body of water into an impromptu fusion bomb. Enlil is killed and Enki is destroyed in the process, with Alex being left severely injured, though nothing she can't recover from, rather than permanently crippled.
Enemies: Enlil
Sample post: Testrun here
Canon enemies:
Asag: A giant, bestial creature possessing both reptilian and mammalian features, Asag operates on a scale corresponding to large mecha. Walking on its six, clawed legs its covered by a strange mix of fur and scales, displaying both reptilian and mammalian features in its general shape and look. More notably, it has no true head, it's body instead just ending in a gaping maw dripping slime where the head should be. Its appearance is supernaturally repulsive making it hard to put your all into fighting or defending against him if you look directly at him, weakening the potency of attacks and defense. Of course, looking away makes hitting that much harder. This effect is potent enough that his mere presence boils the fish in nearby river, lakes and oceans alive. In battle it fights using a mix of brute, physical force and spitting noxious bile.
In battle Asag is accompanied by its offspring, quadroped rock creatures at the size of small mecha such as Arm Slaves. Moving at disturbing speeds for big, lumbering rocks, they mostly attack by swarming and trying to crush enemies under their weight or slamming directly into them with their full bulk.
Humbaba: A giant, bestial creature humbaba towers over most buildings and mecha, even walking around on all four legs. A scaled beast with large, clawed paws, its face is a grotesque, pulsating swirl looking like the entrails of an animal, though they're capable of opening into a fanged mouth. It's tail also ends in the head of a snake. In addition to swipes from its claws or biting, it can roar with the force to shatter buildings and knock at least directly targeted mecha aside as well as fire breath. To make matters worse it has superlative hearing, making it that much harder to sneak up on it in some way and acidic blood eating away at any that damages it. Humbaba is protected by its seven auras and cannot be defeated until they're stripped away. Accepting a gift strips away an aura. Thankfully, the beast is greedy and will accept anything offered as a gift with at least a minor flourish in presenting it.
Ishtar: Appearing as a kaiju-sized, feral woman with claws and a lion-head, Ishtar fights by physically tearing into her enemies and enjoying the thrill of savaging and ruining them. While an intelligent, sentient being Ishtar relishes in bloodshed and savagery and is eager to make use of the opportunity to go to Earth to indulge in her whims without restraint. That does not mean she'll fight like an idiot or want things to get cut short by being beaten down by enemies, it might not kill her but it still hurts, causes embarrassment to the other gods and ends her killing spree. Her very presence causes the emotions of others to start to boil over, spurring them towards greater aggression, violence and impulsivity, even if it doesn't go so far as to override basic identity and loyalty.
Ninurta: A figure as large as Ishtar, Ninurta presents both a more human and civilized appearance, looking like a winged man with a wild mane of hair and the hindlegs of a lion instead of those of a human, along with the mandatory square beard. He carries his giant, talking mace Sharur which he uses with expert proficiency against his enemies, while also using his powers to mend both his own and Ishtar's wounds in battle. People who expect him to be limited to melee due to his choice of a mace as a weapon will be sorely disappointed to learn that he can throw it with perfect accuracy over even extreme distances and have it return to his hand. His demeanor is much more controlled and sensible than Ishtar's, but he is no less determined to fight and win to avoid losing face to the other gods or let his father down.
Enlil: The king of the gods himself is an arrogant, self-assured fighter. He's the king of the gods and have ruled for untold millennia with none other than Enki daring to challenge his power. This arrogance also leads him to take the field alone, refusing to acknowledge humans, even ones armed with powerful magic and technology and Enki himself, as a true threat to him, rather than simply gnats for him to crush. As the god of wind, the weather and distance, he fights with the ability to bend space in responce to attacks or to cause his enemies to attack each other, along with the ability to summon weather such as powerful thunderstorms, hurricanes or tornados and dismissing them again according to his needs. Unlike his subordinate deities, Enlil looks fully like a regal, but arrogant human wearing ancient Mesopotamian clothing and the customary beard. What size he appears as depends on what suits his needs, refusing to be bound by petty spatial dimensions like his lessers.
Vlaams Leger terrorists: As the name and affiliation suggests, they're fanatical Flemish nationalists who fully buy into the idea that the Belgian nation is an unnatural construct imposed on their people by foreign imperialism and fully willing to even kill innocents to correct that. In battle they're not a professional army for good and ill, on the good side they're not as accomplished pilots or as used to actual military tactics as real armies, on the negative side they have no respect for things like the Geneva Convention or civilian losses. They're also fully willing to use the self-destruct function of their mecha should escape become impossible.
NPCs:
Kasper de Witt: Alex' father is a rich, self-possessed man in his early 50s. Despite his corruption and willingness to earn a profit on priceless artifacts, he still has a deep passion for and knowledge about art, archeological artifacts and similar. He reconciles this by believing that all the various attempts at "respecting" them are just giving in to arbitrary political distinctions of the day and that what he does is no worse. He's still somewhat angry at his daughter for their recent fights and while he wants reconciliation, he isn't going to just renounce his ways should he be saved, they come from internally consistent beliefs and have no relation to his recent predicament after all. He'll still mostly focus on being thankful should he be saved. All this is mostly only going to come up if he survives, though. During the mission he'll avoid panicking and stay as calm as possible in the face of being held hostage, which isn't completely so but doing pretty well at it.
Adèle Romilly: In her late 30s, Adèle is a tenured professor at the archeology department of Université Libre de Brussel and one of the foremost experts of Mesopotamian myth in the world. Contrary to most stereotypes of university employees, she's a worldly woman keeping in touch with ordinary society and how to properly dress and present herself. She's somewhat rattled by the experience of getting abducted by terrorists, especially how they ask her for something that's frankly insane. During the mission, she'll keep her head down and try not to get caught in crossfire or provoke Vlaams Leger to kill her.
Pieter de Klerk: Approaching his middle ages and starting to grow fat, Pieter de Klerk is not a physically imposing figure, he is, however, a talented and charismatic leader who build Vlaams Leger from its humble beginnings. He's fully convinced of his cause, but also quite fond of the privileges of having a large group of loyal followers even while having gone underground as a wanted man. Not actually a very capable pilot, he's still using the best unit that Vlaams Leger has left and relies on his followers to shield him as he tries to escape a physical confrontation so that he may rebuild his organization.
