Halo: Militia (Roleplay)

Community General Discussion
#1

(Most of us already know what happened on Reach, so I’ll be straightforward in telling you that this will be a semi-casual roleplay.)

The year is 2552, twenty-seven years since the start of humanity’s war with the alliance of alien specie known as The Covenant. Battles rage on across the galaxy; colonies are vanishing, planets are being burned to glass, and humanity is close to extinction. With the time they have, the United National Space Command (UNSC) is pushing to mobilize and expand its military to defend what ground they have left. Locals and colonists are now being trained to combat the Covenant on their own homes, learning their strengths, weaknesses and tactics from veterans who have walked away from countless engagements with the empire’s ruthless forces.

A fresh batch of volunteers, selected from various sites on Reach, is currently being shipped to ANVIL Base for their training orientation.

Location: Reach
http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Reach

Rules:

Same rules as any RP apply to this one. So we’ll move past that.

*Note: The only exception that these two rules have is that I will be playing the role of your drill instructor.

  • This RP will be be plotted by me all through the beginning act. It will start with your training.
  • Everyone starts in training*
  • Everyone will begin as a recruit*
  • Everyone will have had no prior military combat experience by the time of their enlistment. If anyone has some kind of knowledge in fighting or otherwise, they will need to provide an explanation.
  • Skills and skill sets will vary among each RPer. Don’t try to BS your way into being a sniper or something like that. Just have your character good at what you know you as a person want to be good at as far as combat. Focus on that and work at writing it in training.
  • If you’re worried about individuality, don’t be. You all may start off the same in training (uniforms and the like) but later on when you’re earning your own gear, you can feel free to vary yourself a little. Feel free to try and have a little personality too.
  • Unless you’re having a mostly-dialogue style exchange with another player’s character, try to be detailed. I’m not asking for multi-paragraphed responses each time like some roleplays, but be as detailed as the situation can call for. Again, this is semi-casual, but try not to have one-line posts if you can avoid it.
    -No God modding; this means no controlling other peoples’ characters or actions, this includes body language and dialogue. For example, if two characters are having a conversation, one cannot dictate the other’s response.

Template

Name: [First and Last]
Age: [Between 17-30]
Physical Appearance:
Rank: Recruit
Uniform: Olive Drab Battle Dress Uniform
Birthplace: [Choose from the list of locations]
Personality: [Only if you want to. It’s not needed.]
Background: [Include anything along the lines of previous occupation and reason for enlistment.]
Skills: [Nothing outlandish]

Post your character applications here. I will send you a PM saying you are approved or if your application needs editing. Do not post until then.

#2

If I posted rules like this for the Survivors, I would be Tar and Feathered… XD

#3

(Well its a good thing you didn’t then. You going to write an app?)

#4

(No, too busy moderating one roleplay, two is too much for me right now, and I’m still waiting till all the older members are back in, and Tiin’s busy till at least Friday, so yeah…)

#5

Name: Aaron Szurke
Age: 18
Physical Appearance: Stands at about 5’11". Short dark, almost black, hair and similarly colored eyes. With his broad shoulders, thick neck, and wide jaw, on his flabby torso with scrawny limbs, it looks like someone just smashed together three different body types to make Szurke.
Rank: Recruit
Uniform: Olive Drab Battle Dress Uniform
Birthplace: New Alexandria
Personality: Not dumb by any means, but has little faith in his abilities and intelligence, and as a result, tends to defer to his betters without thinking.
Background: On Reach, the human military capital of the galaxy, it was just socially expected that able-bodied men and women would enlist, more so than any where else. So much so that no one ever bothered asking Aaron Szurke what he planned to do after high school. However, Szurke’s fear about going off world, off of Reach, prevented him from joining the Marines. In order to avoid ridicule and judging eyes whenever he went out, he instead opted to join the Colonial Militia.
Skills: Not likely to question orders. He does not possess anything else that would prove useful in a military environment.

#6

Name: Oliver Shields
Age: 18
DOB: 02/09/2534
POB: Manassas
Physical Appearance: Shields is 5’11. He has green eyes and what remains of his shaved hair is a dark brown. On his lightly tanned face he has a couple of small, circular marks from trying to rid of teenage spots, plus an assortment of small scars around his lower left jaw and neck area from an accident when some tools fell from a shelf and hit him on the farm.
-
Rank: Recruit
Uniform: Olive Drab Battle Dress Uniform
-
Personality: A friendly enough chap. Oliver tends to be pretty tolerant of people, having spent his life working on the farm with others both older and younger than himself. He’s accepting of mistakes, sometimes too much. He’s not a pushover as such but his niceness has a way of kicking him in the teeth. He’s quick to defend people though prefers to do it with his voice than his fists. If it comes to it though, he won’t hesitate to physically defend himself or others.
-
Biography: Oliver’s father, Jackson Shields, was a former Marine who sustained major injuries to his legs during the Battle of Harvest and returned home to his wife, Mary. They had their first child together in 2531 in the city of Ezhtergom on Reach, naming her Alicia after Mary’s late mother. A couple years after Mary was born, the family moved out into the country, living on a small farm in Manassas with Jackson’s brother due to economic trouble.

With the two families working together on the farm, produce grew and more money came in. Oliver was born in 2534 and grew up on a thriving agricultural business, one which grew largely in the region. Alicia and her brother were taught by their mother, once a teacher, until they were ready for high school. They played with the other children on the farm, both their cousins and the other workers’ kids, in between helping on the farm with their parents.

Alicia, the more academic of Mary and Jackson’s children, graduate high school a year earlier and went to college on the other side of Reach when she was just seventeen. The younger of the two, Oliver, was left alone without her and his older cousins who had left in the two years prior. As the only child on the farm part of the Shields family, he took on more work and saw less of his friends. His average grades at school saw him thinking about sticking with the farm past graduation, along with his weakening father.

In 2551, when Oliver was nearing seventeen, his grades looked less pleasing than they had been and he opted to take over from his father, helping his uncle with the farming business they had maintained for two-and-a-half decades. Jackson’s age and old wounds had started to affect his ability to work and Oliver made plans with his uncle to take over, come his graduation. At some point, Alicia had made her way into the UNSC Navy as an officer, an ‘Ensign aboard a Frigate’ as she revealed in her video calls home. It disturbed her parents due to the impending threat of the Human-Covenant war reaching them here, though Oliver was supportive of his big sister.

That same threat got to him too. 2552 saw Oliver volunteering for the Reach militia, readying himself to defend his family if he needed to. His uncle agreed to let him continue their planned partnership after the spontaneous decision and so Oliver left.

#7

(Both apps are accepted. I’ll wait another day and see if someone else joins. If not, then we’ll just go onward anyway.)

#8

Name: Thomas Allen
Age: 19
Physical Appearance: 5’10’’, with brown hair in a crew cut and an overall long face, nose slightly hooked and yellow-green eyes. Thin with powerful legs and rather weak arms.
Rank: Recruit
Uniform: Olive Drab Battle Dress Uniform
Birthplace: Aszod, Reach
Personality: Very honest, slightly cynical, and a perfectionist.
Background: Born on Aszod, Reach on March 7nd, 2533 to a ship breaking yard-working father and mother, Thomas Allen’s childhood was rather uneventful until it took a dark turn in the form of his mother’s premature death when he was six years old. Adding to this was his father’s progressively lowering income, resulting in a bullying problem in school. This ended up developing his now-prevalent cynical attitude. After his graduation of high school and his father’s untimely death while on a ‘business trip’ to the Outer Colonies in 2550, and with nowhere else to go, Allen opted to join the Reach militia in 2552.
Skills: High hand-eye coordination and good at running.

#9

Staff Sergeant Kawolski stood at an eased stance in the middle of Javelin Base’s courtyard. Around the yard were troopers lead by other drill instructors and staff sergeants, all jogging in cadence, Physical Training or still being chewed out for the first time introduction to the Corps. It came as a surprise to Gabe that he was stationed here for local training and the like; he was more expecting to be shipped off to the outer colonies. Still wouldn’t hurt to send a few from Earth fleet if humanity was so concerned with the Covenant striking Reach, he decided.

Just then, the rumble of Pelican thrusters filled the air over the courtyard and the dropship circled its way into the makeshift landing pad: the solid white line that Gabe had painted out for the pilot to use as a guide. It also served as a ready line for the fresh batch of recruits on board. It touched down, hatch opened. The crew chiefs inside had begun ushering the new boots out; shouting, pushing, barking out commands that essentially meant the same thing.

“Go! Go! Go! Move your butts!”

“Hop to! Get it in gear and get your boots on the ready line!”

Gabe remained still, gauging each recruit’s reaction to being hassled out. The first test for them: finding the ready line. As simple as it was, completing that task might determine their initial worth in Kawolski’s unit. This was important, and yet Gabe had to fight the urge to smile.

#10

It was almost blinding as the aircraft’s rear door opened; there wasn’t much sun but the dull sky alone was enough to spike pain in Oliver Shields’ unadjusted eyes. He squinted, turning away from the grey hue with an open hand that feebly attempted to block out the light. His optical pain didn’t seem to matter, however, as several men began shouting at the occupants. Shields was ushered off of the craft with the rest of the rabble, a collection of people from around Reach that had opted to join the militia. Like him, they wanted to be able to defend their territories, their planet, if the aliens showed up to claim yet another world.

He was around the middle of the group. When those in front had gotten off he was able to follow. He landed hard, forgetting to bend his knees. It hurt his pride more than he felt actual pain, receiving a clap on the back and a chuckle from one of the older guys as they joined him on the ground. He shrugged off the hand with an awkward smile and a nod, looking to see what everyone else was doing; the scene seemed pretty textbook, a white line on the yard that the people were shuffling around to stand on. It was like a playground, not that he’d ever really been on one. After having been homeschooled, that sort of thing was foreign to him, though it did remind him of fire drills when he finally joined public education and went to highschool.

The air here was pretty clear, allowing Shields to suck up a breath of the freshness as he placed his feet on the line. The scenery was like back home outside of Manassas: mountains and trees as far as the eye could see. He loved the scene, as opposed to the guy next to him that he’d heard sneeze twice already. A couple of the other nearby guys were complaining about the cold too. City folk were used to having their every need catered for them with all their fancy technology. The Shields’ family weren’t amish but they favoured tools over machines for the most part. It offered more jobs in the community and felt much better.

Shields already missed it. As soon as he was back from all this with the militia, he’d be headed back to his Uncle Jonathan to co-own the business, taking over from his aging father. He smiled at the thought, both happily at the thought of it becoming his living and sadly on account of a degree of homesickness. He coughed quietly and swallowed, clearing any emotion that might have been betrayed in speech.

#11

Name: Alice Karrin Grey
Age: 17
Physical Appearance: Alice is short-statured, slightly tanned, blonde, and blue-eyed, standing at a very unintimidating 5-nothing. She has a small nose and full but proportionately appropriate lips. Despite her not exactly terrifying frame, she’s got a lot of muscle, having taken multiple martial arts classes from a young age and staying on top of her fitness.

Rank: Recruit
Uniform: Olive Drab Battle Dress Uniform
Birthplace: Quezon, Reach
Personality: Extremely defensive, especially about her size, stubborn as stone and very, very dedicated to being capable of defending herself and those she cares about.

Background: Born to Goodman Grey and Marian Grey during a visit to New Alexandria that turned into a hurried delivery, Alice was the first of two sisters the couple had together. Her father was part of the local military police force initially and once his first daughter turned ten, he joined up with the Quezon’s police department. Goodman had quite clearly wanted a son, but he dealt with it, and Alice was eager to be who he wanted her to be. She followed in his footsteps as best she could, planning on joining QPD when she came of age, learning what she would need to from her father and those willing to teach, while her sister, Lisa, turned into something best described a wannabe high-class -Yoink!-, putting strain on relationships in the family.

When she turned sixteen, her father saw something that left him changed for the next five months that he lived, something he never discussed with anyone but his department-selected counselor. Eventually, he took his own life at his desk at the PD, suddenly and unexpectedly just as his therapist claimed to be seeing progress. Despite this, Alice never wavered in her plans for the future. With her mother urging her to do something else, Alice found her path to the job blocked by her mother calling in favors just to stop her.

Applying to the growing militia was something of a spontaneous decision, something she hoped would help reinforce the skills needed to get somewhere in her life and get around and away from her overprotective mother’s influence. Though she still had her heart set on becoming a cop, she knew that the day might come that she had to take up a weapon and fight to survive against an unstoppable alien juggernaut. With the thought of protecting everyone who mattered to her on her mind, Alice joined.

Skills: Excellent reflexes, moderate familiarity with ballistics and extensive martial ability.

#12

(Sorry for the OOC incursion, but will “semi-casual” still restrict roleplay style/skill? I.e. First person vs. third person?)

#13

(I’m pretty sure that the preferred format is third person, past tense. As long as you get a nice amount down rather than one line and structure your post like, grammatically, you’ll be fine.)

#14

Aaron Szürke hadn’t hopped off the military shuttle so much as stumble off, due to his own impatience. When they yelled for him to move, Aaron did so without even checking his footing. If he hadn’t had thrown his arms out to catch himself, he would have gotten a mouthful of dirt and smashed teeth when he hit the ground. Whilst getting back up, Aaron could have sworn he could hear snickering, but honestly, he may have just imagined it. After all, it seemed like the most of the recruits were too preoccupied in forming along the white line to pay attention to his dumb -Yoink-. Lucky, he thought as he brushed the dirt off his hands on his fatigue legs, and jogged over to the line with the rest of the group.

He found a space by the end of the formed up recruits, but after he approached it and got close, another recruit had already stepped into that spot. Fine, then, he shot daggers at the back of the man’s head before he took the spot next to him, and became the last in the line. After poking his head out to see the rest of the group, Aaron could see the various body types of the male and female recruits. A lot of them were his age, hell, he was pretty sure that he had gone to school with that lanky guy on the far end, but to his dismay, he was probably the most out of shape guy in the whole group. While some of the older recruits were a bit pudgy as well, there was no mistaking the muscle they had packed under that fat. Suddenly, Aaron was all the more conscious of his round belly, which hung over his waist like he was several months pregnant. Taking a breath, he sucked in his gut, hoping that no one else had made the comparison.

#15

“They’re all yours, Staff Sergeant!” the crew chief yelled from the Pelican, collapsing his non-active humbler and fitting it into a pack on his waist. He slammed a fist twice on the ceiling of the cabin to signal the pilot to ascend.

“You shouldn’t have!” Gabe called back. He didn’t show his smile, but inside he was laughing. Approaching the line, the clicking of his boots could be heard over the rattling clatter and the unified chats of those in training all around the courtyard. He shifted his weight slightly to compensate for the permanent prosthetic, which he had concealed neatly beneath his pant leg, tucked in a uniform manner into his boot. The faces of the newcomers that now occupied the ready line were young; some showed ambition, some misery, some showed nothing at all. In the end, he would see every side of them.

“Yo!” one of them blurted out, a thick unsophisticated tone weighing his voice. “Like what you see?”

In a blink, the Staff Sergeant marched his way up the line. Mere inches from the recruit’s face, he was wary that the brim of his duty cap didn’t make contact. “You’re not going to be much to look at when I’m scraping you off my heel.” Just then, his eyes darted up to the rag around the man’s scalp before dropping to meet his gaze. “Keep that ghetto sh** off when you’re in my presence and fall in at attention like everyone else.”

Gabe backed off then began pacing the line, hands behind his back as he inspected each of their faces. “I am Staff Sergeant Gabriel Kawolski and as of today until the end of month, I am your drill instructor. You will address me by rank, not ‘sir.’ Failure to keep with that standard will result in a whole lot of misery on your part. Do I make myself clear?”

#16

Alice kicked down the urge to bite her lower lip and shot it in the head as she straightened her back, mimicking the Staff Sergeant’s posture as best as she could, her hands clasping one another behind her back. For some reason, adrenaline was already pumping through her veins, causing her to have to fight herself to stay still rather than bounce on her feet. She kept her chin level, worrying over every bit of her stance. Not to mention the size of some these people. The man the sarge had just reprimanded… she didn’t so much as come up to his elbows, she thought.

Grey listened intently, though every part of her was screaming at her to stop messing around and fix herself. What she was supposed to fix was beyond her, but she felt just wrong anyway.

“Yes, Staff Sergeant!” she said swiftly, her tone measured so it wasn’t exactly a shout but it carried.

#17

“Word of advice, kiddo: don’t be that cocky b*tch that screws over everyone else. Keep to yourself, listen to your drill instructors or drill sergeants or whatever they are in the militia and do what they tell you.”

That was the advice Oliver’s sister, Alicia, had given to him the night before he’d gone to board the Pelican out here. It wasn’t in person though, the siblings instead having chatted over Waypoint while the eldest was stationed on a ship somewhere in orbit. Her words ran through the recruit’s head now as he stood shoulder to shoulder with the men and women on the white line, cringing on the inside as one of them blurted out with some smartass question. Oliver would have smiled at the guy getting roared at had he not feared the intensity of the chewing out finding its way to himself.

More shouting followed, this time directed at everyone and a little less belittling. He was Staff Sergeant Gabriel Kawolski. He was their drill instructor for a month. He’d deliver that same pain they’d just witnessed if he was referred to as anything but ‘Staff Sergeant’. It wasn’t much to remember but Oliver made sure he did, following suit with everyone else as they responded to the Staff Sergeant’s question of whether or not they understood what he’d just been through.

“Yes, Staff Sergeant,” chorused Oliver and the recruits.

#18

Tom barely resisted laughing out loud when the recruit got chewed out.

The Pelican had landed the recruits somewhere cold - at least for Allen, the others seemed to manage just fine - so much so that Tom was starting to shudder, while feeling oddly relaxed. Their new sergeant - Staff Sergeant, he corrected himself - was now yelling towards the entire crowd. Allen’s posture changed a little as he repeated the instructor’s words over and over again in his head. "Staff Sergeant Gabriel Kawolski, drill instructor, address by rank. Staff Sergeant Gabriel Kowalski, drill instructor…" all the while joining the recruits in a loud “Yes, Staff Sergeant,” as to keep himself from feeling uneasy. He fixed his sleeve and focused.

#19

Gabe got back on the clock and started to pace the line, addressing all of the candidates. “I am not your friend, I am not your squad leader, I am not that person to go running to just to talk about how you can’t sleep at night. This is not your typical power test qualification that you were spat out from, where the only thing you learned was how to run in a straight line and not break down in tears after a round of push-ups. That strength won’t be worth **** if you don’t know how to use it.”

He about-faced going for another round. “Which is why you were thrown into my beloved Corps’ training ground: for me to shape you into something that’s worth looking at.” He paused, noticing a very obvious, very visible gap in the row of recruits. Halting on his heel, he turned with an almost robotic stiffness and found that he was hardly at eye level with the top of a recruit’s head. With an equally rigid motion, he tilted his head down to find his chin couldn’t touch the apparent Recruit Grey if he tried. Before he could care to try and comment on her height, he rewound to his previous pace. “And quite honestly, looking at you now tells me that we’ve got a LOT of work to do.”

#20

When the Staff Sergeant stopped in front of her, Grey stiffened and her jaw tightened as she returned his gaze unwaveringly, part of her actually challenging him to say something about her height. Maybe it was the defiance in her eyes or maybe he just didn’t care enough to say anything, because he happened to actually leave her alone. She let out a short breath as he kept walking, not daring to indulge in something so audible as a sigh. She didn’t know where to step yet, so treading lightly seemed to be the best idea.

Alice kept looking forward as he passed by, resisting the urge to spit out a “No, Staff Sergeant”. She thought she was at least more competent than the people around her; even if she wasn’t the largest nor the strongest, she knew how to use what she had. And chances were she had more ballistics training from professionals than anyone around her.

But she knew she could be vastly overestimating herself, and she wasn’t going to be the b*tch that spoke up and ruined it for everyone. She fully expected he’d punish her – hell, maybe even the entire group. So instead, she just kept her mouth shut, resigning herself to allowing the man to continue to belittle everyone.