The character I want to create might go against all RPG guidelines and never be approved, but I thought I would try. Basically, I want him to be a blank slate. He has no fighting style, no crazy weapon proficiency, no profession-- I want to build him into a deep, unqiue character by incorporating his progression through every RPG I use him in (when I thought of this grand plan, I figured LA would have more than... two... active RPGs).
If this is impossible, I'll probably just conform and make him a sword-wielding nomad with secret magic powers who wanders from village to village, and who has an amazing capacity to be a hero. Y'know, the usual?
So.
edit: Let's do this.
edit2: So, a quick and dirty version of the change log/clarifications:
-Necessity of a particular clone's bio will be up to discretion of RPG creator, but if they let me, I would develop and reveal it as the RPG unfolded
-The "genetic limit" of Oliver's jack-of-all-trade-ness is that he becomes proficient in only one particular area, and the areas opposite become weaknesses. (IE: weapon proficiency makes him useless with his hands; close-range proficiency makes him useless long-range, so forth)
BACK TO THE OP!
Greetings. My name is Marshall Gant. I'm the operative in the underground organization RPI, or Regain the Present Initiative, you will be replacing. And that's all you need to know about me. I am - perhaps - far away, or I may be close by. Rest assurd that I am watching you through the camera above your head. Hello there. You need to understand that I cannot make contact with another human being. No member of RPI can. The future of the world in which we live is bleak. It seems the warnings of the various science fiction authors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries were aboslutely correct; there has been a hostile coup de'etat of the entire world. It is every bit the bleak dystopia your prescient authors imagined it would be hundreds of years ago. The secret police of the government have snuffed out every rebellion in its formative stages. The minute a word of dissent is spoken, the individual who spoke that word ceases to ever have existed; obviously, then, the word was never indeed spoken. And that is that.
As intriguing as I may be, you probably are interested in Oliver Mason. Would you like to meet him? Turn around. Do you see him? These thousands of test tubes, filled with embryos and fetuses in various stages of development. Each one of these lifeforms is Oliver Mason. Our secret research into genetic engineering and the psychology of the human shared consciousness led us to this particular breakthrough. You see, the original Oliver Mason is long dead. He was a hero, though. He was willing to sacrifice mind and body for the RPI, which he succeeded in doing minutes into our first experiment. Luckily his fragmented psyche allowed us to experiment without restriction-- there was no worry about damaging him further. We experimented with sharing consciousness while in a drug-induced coma in a sensory deprivation tank and successfully implanted Oliver's memories and consciousness into another Oliver. We immediately donated the original to science.
As the years passed, Oliver was technically our only subject. The psych department was able to reverse the initial mental damage through a series of mental "clonings," while the biology department physically cloned him over and over again, providing us with countless new Olivers.
Once we had mastered the process of consciousness sharing between humans-- "mental cloning" -- we began to intensely train our Olivers. Some were fed a continuous diet of one particular subject, be it calculus, molecular biology, quantum physics, ancient literature, theology, government, military tactics-- whatever we wished, until we induced insanity. The rest we trained physically until death by exhaustion; our clones learned every fighting style, known to human beings, gained proficiency in every weapon to exist upon the face of the earth, and learned every trade and skill from every previous era. The moment before the demise of body or brain, however, we would share the consciousness of that particular clone among the next generation. After several generations we had created a being of unlimited potential. He wasn't a highly trained operative-- those are mortal. The operative we had in mind wasn't created to fill a specific niche; Oliver Mason was engineered to fill every niche. What we had in mind for him transcended time itself. We didn't mean to retake the government; it was impossible. Rather, we intended to change the future as we know it by altering the past.
The technology to send an object through time exists in the future, though it is far from perfect or ideal. So far, we can only send a person back, and after doing so they are permanently stranded. Of course this is precisely the reason we have our legion of Olivers. Each of these tubes contains a perfect physical and mental copy of the next (there will be slight mutations, of course); they are all blank slates. And each one is destined for a different period in time. Our "Transcencion" department researches tirelessly for key, pivotal moments in time we believe could undermine the current government if their historical outcomes were reversed, or just slightly altered. When we decide upon a moment, one of our clones is "programmed" with a subconscous goal, a driving force they may believe is a "calling," "determination," or perhaps even unchanging, unshaking "faith," depending on what is necessary during that time period and within that culture. However, after that we step back. We wave goodbye and wipe a tear from our eye as the clone is sent backwards through time to be discovered somewhere, crying and alone, and raised by the lucky individuals that comes upon it. They raise it, and due to our extensive engineering, the clone excels at everything it does until it finally accomplishes its goals. We merely just wait, monitoring the world for even the most minor of changes.
We have only succeeded thrice, so far, out of five attempts. We noticed nothing of two of our clones. We assume they suffered an untimely death or were perhaps transported to the bottom of the sea; you see, we can only control the time period, not the location of the transported child. Unfortunate, really. One of our clones was apparently an influence social scientist in the 1800s; however, his actions only served to strengthen the current government. I remember the first day "Communism" mysteriously appeared in our textbooks. Some of the staff instantly disappeared, the population of the world was just about cut in half, the government grew more ruthless, and much of the technology across the world suffered.
Our second success only further served to strengthen the government. Our most recent subject was sent back about 3,000 years in the fetal stage. The story goes that our fetus appeared in the past within the womb of a virgin mother. His followers would found a religion. These events only served to further increase the government's hold over us, however. Our great leader is now the avatar of some celestial creator being something-or-other. Personally I find it to be poppycock, but when this change took place a number of staff members suddenly became ready to quit and rat us out for being unethical! We had them exterminated.
Since then we have implemented a failsafe. We have developed a means of indirectly monitoring our subjects and destroying them if their influence is postulated to have an opposite effect upon our future. In the psyche of every clone is a special space reserved for our observation precense. We can interact with our subject and enact phyisological changes. The mind is a powerful thing. Our third successful clone became a rather indecisive President of the United States in 1963. We did not like the direction his administration was taking, so we pulled the plug-- to this day nobody knows what actually happened. A magic bullet? Hardly.
And this brings me to our next Oliver. He is a ripened fetus, floating to your left in the largest tank. I don't know where he'll be going just yet, but I can describe what he'll eventually come to look like.
He'll grow to about six feet tall, give or take a few inches. His hair will be brown, of varying shades. His eye color has typically been brown, though it was been known to sometimes alter itself. Let me remind you that he is a blank slate. Depending on the line of work his caretakers give him, his body type will vary immensely, and of course his skillset will as well. I can guarantee that (with appropriate amounts of practice, guidance, and traning) he will be equal with the best men and women of the time at whatever he happens to undertake. Really, everything about him will change based upon the time period and culture he enters. We have engineered the human equivalent of modeling clay; it is up to those around him to decide whether he will be a beautiful grecian urn or simple scraps tossed to the side.
I'm afraid I must end this correspondence prematurely, however. I seem to have attracted unwanted attention. There are data files stored within the computer terminal you stand at. Be vigilant, be safe, and carry on my work with responsibility. We do not want another failed experiment, or it may be our last. Perhaps if I escape this predicament I will check in on your progress in the futur--if there still is one.
Farewell!
Edited by DevilPaladin, 03 February 2009 - 08:35 AM.
