<strong>This thread is for roleplays only.</strong>If you want to sign up, look here (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=159344).<br/>For reference:<br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Background (click to expand)</div><div class="spoiler_body"><span class="bbc_u">Story</span><br/>The Earth was already crowded, starving, and cranky when the astronomers first noticed the problem two years ago. The sun had drifted through a large patch of interstellar carbon and hydrogen, large enough to throw off its rate of fusion and send it into an immediate pre-giant stage. Earth had about ten years, give or take three, they said, before the sudden rapid expansion of the sun would end it all. Already, three things were beginning to rise: temperatures, tempers, and the price of Arctic real estate. Engineers from several aerospace firms had joined together on one massive project: the construction of an interstellar evacuation fleet. Each of the ten-thousand-ton ships was set for a different star system known to contain planets; each one was equipped with enough cryostatic pods to fit over five thousand people, and was was designed with the command module in the front, the pod storage areas in the rear, and the storage areas in the center of the ship along its entire length. Regulation also stated that every passenger must be awakened at least once every five years for a physical evaluation and brief exercise session; with approximately 5000 people on board, this meant about 20 people would be awakened every week. Command crew consisted of the captain, the engineers, the main technician and his staff, the pilot, a doctor, and a few guards in case passengers got unruly.<br/><br/>Needless to say, these guys usually didn't take long to get to know each other.<br/><br/>The Solace was the fourth ship to be launched. It was heading in a completely different direction; while most of the ships had been headed toward the galactic center, the Solace's destination was in the direction of the peripheral systems. With the ion engines working at maximum potential, the estimated travel time was thirty-five years.<br/><br/>Everyone in the command crew had their own stasis pod, but the rules mandated that there must be at least ten crew members awake at any given time. Shifts varied between ships; on the Solace, the crews traded off every year. There were five total crews of fourteen members each, including captains, so that no one person had to spend more than seven total years awake on the trip.<br/><br/><span class="bbc_u">Layout</span><br/>The Solace is the first of the second-generation spaceliners, and as such, has certain improvements over initial models. Water is contained in two eight-thousand-gallon tanks and is recycled by an onboard purification system that uses engine exhaust energy to vaporize and distill the water; the remaining solid waste is jettisoned into space. Food is stored in dried form, as several tons of a dried compound that contains the proteins and calories and vitamins necessary for life; when water is added, the resulting sludge is bitter and sweet at the same time. Some start out loving it; everyone ends up hating it.<br/><br/>The ship is a spinning cylinder with rooms along the outer edge, and engines and storage in the center; gravity is simulated by the ship's centrifugal force. Thus, gravity is low or nonexistent in engine and storage areas. In areas along the outer edge (or periphery), "gravity" varies between 0.6 and 0.9 G's. This also means, interestingly, that most windows are located on the floor. The cryogenic pods occupy the entire aft section, both the center and periphery, such that some have "gravity" and some do not. The ship's computer is a mainframe located just forward of the engine room, and connects to dumb terminals throughout the ship. It runs a command-line Unix variant which was specifically designed to allow easy interfaces with power levels, engine output, temperature, atmospheric pressure and contents, course modifications, and so on. Since it has no graphical interface, however, it may be difficult for non-engineers to use. There is a ship-board database of sorts, and the computer hosts it as a local server. There is a wireless router located in the break room, and with proper configuration, any wireless-enabled device can connect as if connecting to a website. The ten-terabyte database includes Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Commons as of January 2015, several engineering journals, and the entire contents of several massive online literature collections, including all known public-domain literature. It also contains several million news articles from the past century as a way of preserving recent history. Internal communication is handled a number of ways; since most crew members have internet-capable devices, the most common method of communication is an instant-messaging program developed by a company called Softros. When that fails, pagers are used. There are electrical outlets contained in all of the rooms except the cryo-storage room.<br/><br/>The layout is fairly straightforward. There are five rooms along the forward section of the periphery (outer edge of the ship), housing the command crew. The largest room contains the cryogenic pods and airlock. Only technicians tend to go in there. Next to it is the break room, which is also the dining area. It has areas to relax and eat, a connecting passage (through a door in the ceiling) to the central storage areas, and large windows in the floor. Next to the break room is the main control room, where there are enough terminals for the entire command crew to work at once (though this almost never happens). It was fancifully designed in the style of Star Trek bridges, with a captain's chair in the center, a helmsman's seat and technician's seat in front of this, engineering seats in the rear, and a large screen in the front. (Usually, the screen is just used to display movies or video games). Next to the control room is the dormitory, which is roughly partitioned into enough "rooms" for all members to have personal areas. The partitions are thin, weak, and not soundproof in the slightest capacity, and they do not reach all the way to the ceiling. Next to this is the washroom, containing water outlets, toilets, and "showers" (just a scrub with two wet sponges, one soapy and one clean, is all that anyone gets). Everything was designed to use as little water as possible; the water distillation facility's capacity is limited. And next to this is the cryogenic storage room again, since the ship is circular.<br/><br/>Perhaps the most ingenious element of the Solace is one that kills three birds with one stone: oxygen enrichment, CO2 elimination, and protection against harmful cosmic radiation. Scientists in early 2014 developed a strain of genetically modified bacteria that mimic the photosynthetic elements of plants, except instead of absorbing visible-spectrum radiation, they absorb and utilize radiation at much higher energy levels (i.e. cosmic rays). This bacteria forms an algae-like mesh along the inside of the entire hull of the ship. Stale air is cycled through to the thin, empty outer chamber that surrounds the ship, and the resulting pressure differential filters it through the bacterial purifier. Most of the carbon dioxide is thus absorbed and replaced with oxygen, and harmful radiation is absorbed in the process. However, due to the small areas where air is pumped through and the mesh is broken, there are few areas in the ship that are vulnerable to cosmic rays; these areas are nicknamed "hot zones" by most crews. Standing in one for too long may cause a headache, blurred vision, and/or retinal flashes. No further serious symptoms have been observed, but very few studies have been conducted, so nobody knows what prolonged exposure might cause.<br/></div></div><br/><strong><span class="bbc_u">Characters</span></strong><br/>Jakobos:<strong>Devin Turner (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=159344.msg7348486#msg7348486)</strong>(Captain)<br/>Xanthaine:<strong>Lin Sheng (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=159344.msg7346621#msg7346621)</strong>(Engineer)<br/>Frank Reshman:<strong>Andrew Clark (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=159344.msg7348283#msg7348283)</strong>(Engineer)<br/>mj2002:<strong>Audrey Moore (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=159344.msg7348767#msg7348767)</strong>(Technician)<br/>Chaznia:<strong>Shane Bartholomew (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=159344.msg7351795#msg7351795)</strong>(Technician)<br/>RipTide:<strong>Kristin "Kris" Palmer (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=159344.msg7358103#msg7358103)</strong>(Technician)<br/>Caela:<strong>Kayla "Nike" Lewis (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=159344.msg7347767#msg7347767)</strong>(Pilot)<br/>Moon Hound Hati:<strong>Kiran Reed (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=159344.msg7349486#msg7349486)</strong>(Guard)<br/>Chreestafer:<strong>Nicholai "Nikki" Phoenix (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=159344.msg7348885#msg7348885)</strong>(Guard)<br/>Grenadine:<strong>Ariel Cohen (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=159344.msg7350691#msg7350691)</strong>(Guard)<br/>AngelicBlade:<strong>Kieth Folkenskold (http://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=159344.msg7349492#msg7349492)</strong>(Medic)<br/><br/>We'll wait for everyone to post before the shuttle reaches the ship.