Two Minutes After Midnight: A Post-Apoc AC

Red_Spy · Aug 4, 2014

The year was 1989 and the Cold War seemed to be coming to a close. In Czechoslovakia the Velvet Revolution was threatening to bring down the socialist government, and in the USSR Gorbachev was embarking on a quest to liberalize the Soviet state. The Iron Curtain was falling, and there didn't seem to be anything to stop it. That was until East German aircraft appeared over West Germany. The FRG responded with force. It was there, just a few miles east of Lubeck, that the first battle of the third world war was fought.

The result was lost to history, but it was known that just a while later the militaries of the two German states started clashing. Tanks crossed the border, swarming over the Fulda Gap, threatening Frankfurt. NATO and the Warsaw Pact were quick to assist their allies, despite the political instability in Eastern Europe. And on August 21st, 1989, the clock struck midnight. Two months and twenty-five minutes ago citizens on both sides of the conflict were given orders to seek a possible fallout shelter, for nuclear missiles had been launched.

You were in Leningrad at the time. Upon hearing the warning you collected your belongings and went a few miles north, to one of the bunkers built by the Soviet government. There wasn't much time to wait, and a few minutes before the missiles struck all the bunker doors were slammed shut. None were anywhere near full.

Now, two months later, supplies are running low. It is now time to open the bunkers and face the new world.

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This is Two Minutes After Midnight, a post-apocalyptic AC set in the ruins of Leningrad. After three and a half years of ACing, I am happy to bring you an AC idea I actually put time and effort in. Depending on how you define time and effort.

Like all GMs, I reserve the right to kick any player that I think is a problem. If you continually cause problems, I will find amusing ways to kill your character. Amusing for me, that is. You all have AC'd for a bit, you know what causes problems.

Now on to character creation.

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Character Creation:

To create a character, fill out the form below. I have only two rules when it comes to what you can do. First, keep your character relatively normal and sane. And second, all characters must at least understand the Russian language. You can be bilingual if you want, but one of the languages has to be Russian.

Name: A name
Gender: A gender
Age: An age
Description: A description?
Biography: A biography. What was your pre-post-apocalyptic life like? You are given skills based on what is in your bio. Stuff you would know about, know how to do, etc. And maybe, just maybe, it will matter in the plot.
Skills: Skills given based on your bio. You can also get more as the game goes on.
Equipment: What belongings you had when up left for the bunker. It can also include things like extra water and food from the bunker.

The chat for this is here.

Red_Spy · Aug 4, 2014

Players:
Location: Hotel in Leningrad

Player: Dem Taqat
Name: Frederick Gerani
Status: Keeping watch in a Leningrad hotel.

Player: Omega
Name: Ritva Saari
Status: Sleeping with Frederick in a Leningrad hotel.

Player: SamSniped
Name: Anastasia Larceini
Status: Shot in the right arm.

Player: Mechaerik
Name: Nikolai Renatovich Sokolov
Status: Using vodka as a painkiller for his shot left leg.

Player: Nukeknockout
Name: Tanya Boroshkova
Status: May or may not be plotting to rob the group.

Player: Patchy
Name: Dimitry Michurin
Status: Experimenting.

Player: Bonefang
Name: Firaz Karimov
Status: DOA

NPCs:

Name: Vasily ???
Description: Guy heading south to escape the Russian winter.

Name: Gunguy (?)
Description: A man who was wandering around the hotel before he had a short fight with the PCs. Now lost his gun, making him just guy.

Dem Taqat · Aug 4, 2014

Name: Frederick Gerani
Gender: Male
Age: 25
Description: Frederick Gerani is a 6'3 tall human male with blue eyes and black hair. He has been known to wrap a strip of cloth around his head at odd times, but otherwise dresses rather normally.
Biography: Frederick Gerani was born in West Germany at the height of the cold war. He held a relatively normal childhood, graduating school with decent grades and moving onto university, where he studied economics. It was here where most of his more persistent traits and hobbies developed, most notably his taking up martial arts classes in an attempt to get closer to his Childhood crush. Although this strategy backfired rather badly in its allowing her to beat him bloody on a regular occasion, Frederick developed his talents of wooing on numerous other inhabitants of the university campus.

One of these inhabitants was Dianne Del Costa, a Spanish woman studying music with dreams of forming her own band. After several encounters left them on good terms, Frederick found himself unceremoniously conscripted into the band. After learning guitar with surprising skill, he eventually agreed to give the whole thing a shot, but only after serving his mandated time as a conscript in the German Army. Although Frederick dreaded the required months of service, he found himself not untalented at it, his time spent studying martial arts in University having given him something of a head start on the other recruits.

When the arduous service of conscription was done, Frederick met up once more with Dianne and her other recruits, some from university and others collected from the 6 months she'd spent elsewhere. Together, they founded 'Under the Mask', a band that started of mediocre and sky-rocketed upwards when it returned to Dianne's native Spain. After over a year there, they found their music spreading across the western world, including, strangely enough, the decaying Soviet Block.

As the thawing of relations continued, Frederick took a trip to the historic city of Leningrad, investigating the possibility of the band making an appearance there. However, this plan was thrown completely off the rails when the war broke out, and Frederick found himself trapped in the city. However, a bureaucratic mistake prevented him from being shipped out, and when the alarms began to screech one of Frederick's jailers took pity on him and let him out before leaving. Snatching what few possessions he had, Frederick Made a run for the shelters, and made it inside just in time.

Spoiler With Thanks to SamSniped :

Samsniped said:
make the bio a list of names finally

Spoiler A List of Names :

Skills:

Celebrity Charm: A master when performing and charmingly outrageous when not, Frederick gets +4 to charisma rolls
I know Kung Fu: After years of practice in martial arts, Frederick gets +4 to unarmed combat rolls
Sometime Scholar: Having studied the subject in University, Frederick gets +6 to rolls requiring knowledge of economics
Conscript Soldier: As a result of his military training, Frederick suffers no penalties when using firearms at close or medium ranges.
Rock Star: A member of an internationally acclaimed rock band, Frederick gets +6 to rolls when making music
Deutschland Uber Alles: Frederick. Speaks. German. (And Spanish, but apparently that doesn't deserve its own skill.

)

Equipment:
Clothes he is wearing. Includes heavy coat.
Hat, gloves, scarf.
Wristwatch
Wallet containing a mix of German Deutsche-Marks, Spanish Peseta, and Soviet Rubles
Passport and other required ID
German Driving License
Pocket guide to Leningrad. (Includes Map)
Russian-German Phrasebook.
String holding several keys that dont unlock anything in Russia
Worn old strip of cloth
Paperclip
Pen
Boots
Pistol with 4 bullets

Backpack
Clothes he is not wearing. Includes a dress that isn't his.
Bath Towel
Toothbrush and worn Flannel (Wikipedia says non-brits refer to it as a 'washcloth')
Shaving Razor
'Diary'
Notebook
Storybook: 'Metherac: Legend of Redblade'
Folder of Music and Song Lyrics
Several flyers fo the Rock Band 'Under the Mask'
Matches
A handful of small empty plastic Bottles
2 Bars of Choclate
2 Larger (1 Litre) Plastic Bottles containing water, taken from the bunkers stores
2 cans of food, taken from the bunkers stores
A can opener, taken from the bunkers stores several hours later
An Empty Water Bottle
Some Blankets

Battered Guitar Case
Guitar
Various tuning equipment, some spare strings, ect

DT

Omega124 · Aug 4, 2014

Name: Ritva Saari
Gender: Female
Age: 25
Description: 5'4'', honey hair, brown eyes, Finnish
Biography: Ritva Saari was born in Helsinki in 1964, the oldest of three and the only daughter. Ritva's father, Alvar was a Finn soldier during the Winter War; he volunteered when the Soviets started to threaten his Karelian home. When the war ended, Alvar migrated eastwards to the Finnish capital. However, he had a communist brother, Paavo (who also didn't enlist, to the rest of the family's shame), who welcomed the annexation from the Soviet Union, and elected to stay behind.

At the tender age of six, Ritva saw Alvar fall out of his favorite chair, clutching his heart. Unknown to her at the time, her father was suffering from a heart attack. Luckily, paramedics arrived at the scene at a timely manner, and prevent Ritva from becoming a single parent child. However, she was so inspired by the men who were able to save her dad, that she vowed that she wanted to be one of them.

Ritva kept her promise, and after graduating from secondary school, went off to Helsinki University to eventually become a doctor. Her most memorable event of her undergraduate years was in her sophomore year, where she spent a semester in West Germany. One of the many people she met was a young raven haired economics major named Frederick Gerani. Everything happened so fast; it seemed like in one minute Ritva met Gerani, and in the next, she was on his bed naked. Saari became one of the first conquests of the soon-to-be European rock star. A semester later, she would return to Finland, where she would hear about Gerani but never see him again.

Right before her summer break in '89 was to end and the beginning of her last school year before getting her degree, Ritva elected to go visit her Uncle Paavo as a surprise. While she has infrequently saw him visit family back in Finland as a kid, her father would try to plan visits to other relatives to avoid seeing him. With the few interactions they had being positive, she wanted to make up for some of the lost time.

Paavo had moved to Leningrad at this point, so she took a flight to Leningrad. The date was August 21st. She managed to get off the plane, out of the airport, and hail a taxi before the air raid sirens starting blaring. The taxi driver immediately altered his course towards the nearest bunker, a move that Saari did not blame. The two barely made it in the nick of time, and now Saari shyly hid away from all the strangers, hoping this night mare will end.

Skills:

Maamme, Kielemme: Ritva, being a native Finn, knows how to write and speak in Finnish. For backstory/RP reasons, she also knows German but that seems to not be important

"Doctor" is just one of my many professions that have quotes around them: Ritva, still a university student at the time the nukes fell, is not technically a doctor in a legal sense. However, due to her extensive training to become one, she still has bonuses when performing medical-related tasks.

Smarter than the Average Bear: Thanks to devoting her life to studying rather than having a social life, Ritva generally has some understanding of non-specialist fields

"Clumsy enough she'll use her skills on herself fairly often": Ritva is not the most graceful doctor-student around. In fact, she is extraordinarily uncoordinated in physical activity, which may prove to be a risk to the community. Is more liable to trip, slip, drop stuff, and hit herself when using objects.

Your Wish is My Command: Ritva has extreme difficulty standing up for herself and being assertive, and hates being placed in any sense of authority. She will often do what other people tell her to do, and not even realize she's doing their bidding. Opposing charisma checks are more likely to succeed against Ritva (but no penalty for Ritva doing her own charisma check on others)

Do No Harm: The Hippocratic Oath stipulates that one should do no harm. Despite the post-apocalyptic wastelands being harsh and unforgiving, Ritva takes her vow very seriously, and is still a unwavering pacifist. If Ritva is to attack, she must first pass a moral check; failure will result in hesitating and doing nothing, and will dodge instead of parrying whenever possible.

Equipment

A suitcase containing:
Spare clothing
First aid kit
A plastic water bottle
A Finnish-Russian translation book
A copy of Lord of the Rings
Medical textbooks
Passport

A wallet containing:
Her driver's license
A bunch of rubles and markkas
A picture of her family

A wrist containing:

A watch given to Ritva by her dad when going off to college

SamSniped · Aug 4, 2014

Confirming that I am joining. I just need to come up with an actual character idea

Name: Anastasia Larceini
Gender: Female
Age: 25
Description: 5'6", dark brown hair, hazel eyes, a stocky but still sexy body. Distinctive Russian and Italian features (take that as you will).

Biography: Anastasia Larceini was the oldest of the three Larceini siters, and also the most distanced from her family. She grew up with a dual citizenship, though unlike her two younger sisters, she grew up behind the Iron Curtain with her father. She always hated school, and her father practically had to force her to finish high school while she pursued her true passions- photography and horseback riding. Although photography was just a pastime of hers, mostly, she was arguably one of the best riders in Russia, and easily the best in Leningrad. She managed to win many awards in all different kinds of competitions, and became a local celebrity.

She also enjoyed parties, of course. Her school nights were usually a blur, and she woke up in the middle of nowhere in various states of being dressed more than once. Somehow, she was never caught by anyone, though. Anastasia was luckily a fast runner, and she was always the first of her friends to escape the police whenever anything went down. She was also more than capable of fighting her way home if she needed to. The people she was with were rarely so lucky. She lost many friends before the age of 18, though, and by the time she graduated she had grown tired of waking up to find another friend found in a ditch with their brain blown out, or sent off to a gulag.

When she turned 21, she managed to finally get out out of the USSR, and after reuniting with her family in Italy, she traveled across Europe, using the money she stole from her dad before leaving plus the leftover cash from doing some less-than-legal and definitely morally questionable things in her life. When she wasn't partying, she was winning multiple competitions in dressage across Europe, winning at the highest stages with ease. One night at a club in Germany, she met Frederick Gerani, and although he insisted he never knew her (or spent that night with her), she fell in love with the man. She managed to score two other nights with him at the same club, though he still hadn't learned her name by the end of that time. After that time, she never saw him again, until one day when she was listening to a radio station and heard a song by a band called "Under the Mask". Immediately recognizing the voice of one of its two major members, she looked up the band, and found that Fred was, in fact, the lead singer. She set up the rest of her journey so she could follow him across Europe while he toured with his band. While she won huge competitions across Spain by day, she spent her nights listening to his band perform, and even managing to spend a couple nights with him again. Of course, he never remebered her afterwards, and there's hopefully a good chance he never remembered anything from the night when he did that thing with his acoustic guitar. When she found that he was going to travel to her home city of Leningrad, she decided to try to get to know him there, knowing the managers of all the clubs and bars where he would be performing. Within 24 hours of her arrival, war had begun, and she fled to the nearest shelter, unknown to her that the man she had been following this whole time was in the same bunker with her.

Skills: Skills given based on your bio. You can also get more as the game goes on.

Equipment:

Sketchbook and pen
Pocket knife
Gas mask
Basic clothing
A heavy fur-lined jacket and matching gloves
Leather satchel
A picture of her old horse, presumably dead by nuclear annihilation
Lighter
Flask (now half-) full of vodka
A towel
Wallet
High-quality camera
Six rolls of film
Digital camera (prototype from Canon as a gift from a sponsorship)
Gold wristwatch
Two bottles of water, some rations, and a couple purification tablets "borrowed" from the shelter
Incomplete, will finish shortly

mechaerik · Aug 4, 2014

wip
Name: Nikolai Renatovich Sokolov
Gender: Male
Age: 35
Description: Russian.
Biography: Born in Irkutsk in 1954, Nikolai lived his early years relatively unconcerned with the world at large. His life then was more or less the same as the average Russian boy. However, upon turning 18, he was called up do his mandatory military service. He spent most of the next two years stationed in various Warsaw Pact countries, particularly in Czechoslovakia.

After his required two years, he mustered out and moved to Moscow. He lived there for a while doing odd jobs in relative poverty, unwilling to go back to Irkutsk. It was around this time that Nikolai really began drinking heavily, though he was no teetotaler in his army days. Eventually he managed to get a job working with the circus, seeing it as an opportunity to get out and see more of the country. He had learned to juggle as a child, and quickly got the hang of juggling with lit torches. He also learned to fire breathe in order to perform his job even better.

Since he was occasionally called in to help with various acrobatic acts, he also has some experience with that as well. In the end he became the go-to guy in the circus if they needed an extra man to do something, but his specialty was always juggling and fire-breathing. He lived a relatively comfortable existence. He had money for his vodka, he got to see the world, he had few things tying him down; he was happy.

Then the sirens went off. When they sounded, Nikolai was doing his juggling. Panicking, he grabbed his equipment, punched out a nearby viewer, stole his backpack, and ran to his trailer. He threw out most of the things he found in the bag and shoved in several bottles of vodka, cushioning them with some clothing he had lying around. He also grabbed his old army knife and ran to the nearest bunker.

Skills:

Sent to Some Red Army Town: Nikolai served his two years in the Soviet Army. (No penalty to firearm usage up to mid-range)
Entrance of the Gladiators: Nikolai's blows are mighty enough to fell even the averagest of foes. (Bonus to unarmed)
We May Have Started the Fire: Nikolai plays with fire for a living. (Bonus to fire usage)
Hold my Пиво: Nikolai bleeds harder alcohol than most breweries manufacture. (Lessened penalty to drunkeness)
Balls in the Air: Nikolai is adept at juggling. (Large bonus to juggling.)

Equipment: Backpack, containing the following items:

Notebook full of paper
Algebra workbook
Pencils (2)
Pencil Sharpener
Pens (2 black, 1 blue)
Vodka (4 large bottles)
Soviet Army knife
1 change of clothing
Can opener
6 cans of food

Hip bag, containing the following items:

Juggling torches (5)
Lighting fluid
Pocket lighter
Box of matches

Flask (full of vodka)
Wallet (empty)

Nukeknockout · Aug 5, 2014

Name: Tanya Boroshkova
Gender: Female
Age: 23
Description: A small-ish young caucasian woman with dark hair and brown eyes. She is lithe and muscular, and always carries herself with great grace and balance. Hair used to be moderately long, but cut short not long after entering the bunker.
Biography:

Spoiler :

The beginning of the famous ballerina Tanya Boroshkova's story is not a happy one - records of her birth parents do not appear to exist. Rather, her elder sister by fourteen years, Katarina, raised her. When ends weren't met, Katarina would turn to prostitution and petty thievery to make the rent and keep government authorities from investigating their case.

When Tanya turned ten, it became her responsibility to provide for part of the expenses. She would run errands, beg on street corners, and steal. At the age of twelve, she graduated from pickpocketing to grand theft when she attempted to rob a payroll office. Tanya had broken into the safe, but was surprised by an officer of the constabulary. She ran, he pursued.

As it so happened, Morozov Mikoj, a mid-level functionary assigned to the task of showing the world Soviet culture, witnessed the chase and the grace with which the little girl escaped the officer. He tracked her down, and bartered with Katarina to have Tanya be taught to dance in exchange for prociding a stipend for her support.

Tanya showed natural talent in dance, but the stipend was never enough to pay even for just her food. The pickpocketing and safecracking continued, and years later the prostitution commenced. Despite her considerable skill, the authorities, especially Soviet authorities, could not be so blind. She was picked up multiple times in connection to various thefts, but as always Morozov Mikoj argued for her necessity in the display of superior Soviet culture and she was released.

At the age of 18, the stipend was finally enough for her to live off of, and her career as a whore and a thief came to a close. In December of 1984, she earned her first internationally recognized trophy for excellence in ballet. As the years followed, so did the trophies and the respect of western powers.

Despite her international recognition in certain circles, Tanya kept her peace on the subject of politics. Morozov did not, though, and it is not so surprising he was reassigned to Siberia on allegations of sleeping with his charges.

When the sirens sounded and Tanya fled for the bunker, she took a ready bag she kept packed at all times, a holdover from her painful history.

Skills:
-Stealth: Tanya is used to keeping her head down and letting others look right past her. +4 to Stealth rolls.
-Thief: Tanya has been making other people's things, hers for as long as she's been alive. Of course it just comes naturally by now. +5 to pickpocketing and lockpicking rolls.
-Charisma: For Tanya, interfacing with people is second nature. It was required for her to stay alive, and that skill serves her well now. +4 to conversational rolls.
-Balance: Running, climbing, jumping, dancing, handstands, backflips...all of these have been constants in Tanya's life. +4 to dexterity based rolls.
Equipment: The contents of Tanya's ready bag:
-One(1) Gas mask
-Four(4) extra gas mask filters
-Eleven(11) cans of beans
-One(1) Can opener
-One(1) Set of lockpicks
-Eighteen(18) Condoms
-One(1) .22 Revolver
-One(1) box containing twelve(12) .22 bullets
-One(1) Pocketknife
-One(1) Small medkit containing Six(6) bandages
-One(1) bottle containing Sixty-three(63) aspirin pills
-One(1) bottle containing Twelve(12) penicillin tablets
-One(1) Raincoat
-One(1) Pair of leather gloves
-One(1) Blanket
-One(1) Matchbox containing Thirty-two(32) matches

Wallet:
-ID
-Useless Rubles
-Photo of Katarina

Patchy · Aug 6, 2014

Name: Dimitry Michurin
Gender: Male
Age: 40
Description: Russian wearing a worn out and stained coat, has greying hair and a large mustache.
Biography:
Dimitry studied biology in ETH Zurich before returining to the Soviet Union to further his research away from silly ethical constraints such as bans on human experimentation. He moved to the outskirts of Leningrad and lived a hermit-like existance completely engrossed in his research.

Dimitry studied many different drugs that could have a physiological effect on the human body and worked on improving steriods for the government to fund his research. His darker experiments however focused on mutating symbiotic bacteria that could have a wide variaty of effects on humans depending on how they had been bred.

On the day that Dimitry had been forced to evacuate to the bombshelters he was forced to leave almost all of his painstakenly grown specimines behind to be purged in nuclear fire thus cementing his fall into madness.
Skills:
General Knowledge: [Although he may be insane Dimitry still graduated from one of the world's top universities.] +4 to knowledge rolls
Knowledge (Biology): [Dimitry's field of specialization] additional +4 to knowledge rolls about biology
Knowledge (Medical): [Dimitry preformed quite a few more than questionable studies on humans showing his proficiancy with the feild of medicine] +4 to medical rolls.
German Language: [Dimitry studied abroad in Switzerland] is fluent and literate in german.
Equipment:
Backpack
3 canteens with bacteria that can purify water
A gas mask and some replacable filters
Scaple and other small science equipment
Canned food and bottled water
Basic sanitary equipment (gloves and masks)
Winter clothing
Basic first aid equipment
Compass and map of Leningrad
Blanket

bonefang · Aug 6, 2014

1st time in here :

Name: Firaz Karimov
Gender: Male
Age: 31
Description: A haggardly middle aged man, going bald. Firaj limps a little for his left leg is wounded. He wears an ancient persian longcoat, it's glory days long gone, now with patches in several portions. Firaj sports a beard as is prescribed by his religion.
Biography: A trader from the Caucus, he has been to all parts of globe. Firaj knows that rich people, that has money, wants things that is usually not available locally, and he takes it upon himself to "procure" these items, obviously at a premium. Some fancy restaurant wants exotic spices from the Indian Subcontinent or a Patriot wanting Equipment, Firaj is there with these offerings. While not exactly legal, papers can always arranged, for a price.
One of the many skills Firaj has the ability to speak in several tongues. Also, influencing people and getting to understand what the counterpart wants.
Skills:
Charisma
Language
Trade
Equipment:
Holy Quoran
Longcoat and trousers
Smokes and matches
Stolen can of beans

Am i doing it right ?

Patchy · Aug 6, 2014

Whooo! New blood! The best advice I can offer is to acept the chaos that is ac and become one with it. Also get a quick handle on the other player's personalities, the crazies are easy to spot but it is the RP centered ones that have a good chance of stabing you in the back.

One of us, one of us....

bonefang · Aug 6, 2014

When does this happen ? I need to know the time when the others are present.
Please mention GMT.

I am GMT +5:30

Terran Empress · Aug 6, 2014

subbing

bestrfcplayer · Aug 7, 2014

Joining. Will post sometime later

Red_Spy · Aug 7, 2014

Response to bonefang is below.

Spoiler :

Announcing that the first mission will be Monday, 1:00 AM MSK (+4). Hope you all can make it.

Spoiler :

bonefang · Aug 8, 2014

That is 9 PM on sunday GMT ?

Red_Spy · Aug 8, 2014

That should be correct.

SamSniped · Aug 8, 2014

22:00 GMT, I believe. But it can't hurt to be there early

(And if you're GMT +5:30, that's bright and early at 03:30. Have fun!

bonefang · Aug 9, 2014

Damn, 3 Am in the morning ?!? :sleep:

bonefang · Aug 11, 2014

I fell asleep. I dont think I can be a part of this. sorry :cry:

Red_Spy · Aug 11, 2014

I'm sorry about that. This is really the earliest I can do given my schedule. I hope you have better luck playing an AC in the future.

Two Minutes After Midnight: A Post-Apoc AC

Surprised

Surprised

Bladespawn

Challenging Fate

DJ Goodboye

Tuturuu!

Rusty Hinge

Emperor

Emperor

Emperor

Emperor

Hornet

Steppin' up!

Surprised

Emperor

Surprised

DJ Goodboye

Emperor

Emperor

Surprised

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