The Fold

[Vogel]

The Sirius Sector is a place of great turmoil; it is split into numerous seams between great, warring parties, constantly on the verge of ripping itself apart. This much is understood, has been understood, and it will most likely persist for the remainder of humanitys occupation of it.

But there are some among its denizens who refuse to be caught up in these great bouts of strife. Some take up arms as vigilantes. Others reap the spoils of piracy. Others still take out sheer anger and hatred on all their neighbors. But there are those that wish to excel no different than the great warring factions, but on their own, through their own merits. They are the true adventurers, the ones who in essence stare down the world.

The Fold is one such organization.

While the Outcasts and Corsairs fight across Sirius for domination in the underworld, there have been few groups that have attempted to maintain their autonomy, opting for the quick and easy path of picking a side and reaping the benefits, as well as the consequences. The Fold, however, is one of the exceptions.

Meredith Vang was a good smuggler; the fact that hardly anyone knew who she was, what she flew in, and what she smuggled was the prime indicator of this sentiment. She had evaded House police and naval units, evaded their Bounty Hunter and mercenary lackeys, evaded pirates and their ilk, and most importantly had evaded imprisonment and death. In her efforts merely to survive in this maelstrom of a Sector, Vang acquired a sense of ambition, and before long found herself running the most dangerous routes, and putting her well-earned credits towards making her beloved ship, the Starcutter, even more efficient at its job.

But ambition knows no bounds. She quickly became aware that she was but one smuggler, in one ship. Her efforts, while exemplary for her trade, were singular, and predominantly worthless: survival, economically or otherwise, had become irrelevant. What mattered was achievement. And so she decided to take the next, and only, logical step in her career.

It was a step that would probably see her vented into space someday.

Pooling the money she hadnt put into her ship, Vang began a rigorous campaign towards creating a full-fledged independent smuggling organization, with herself at its head. After months of cajolery, bribery, and espionage, she had created an impressive net of contacts from Rheinland to the Taus, had rented a portion of the Barrier Gate Station for her operations, and had laid the foundation for a fledgling organization that would either make it big, or die trying.

All she needed now were more smugglers.

What its All About

The Fold is an unofficial player group aimed at making the smuggling trade worthwhile. Smuggling, as most people know, is needlessly hazardous: the profits gleaned are in no way commensurate with the threats faced. In addition, smuggling is best performed with freighters with very low cargo yields, once again cutting profits in half. This has dissuaded many players who see trading as a means to an end: money into weapons. Aside from the faction-specific Artifact and Cardamine trade, the remaining Sirian smugglers are precious few in number, and no doubt fly the most profitable routes across empty space.

This is not what smuggling is all about. The desire to turn trade into profit, the desire to have high-capacity transports and super-efficient fighting vehicles has stunted if not thwarted the concept of smuggling for most people. I suppose it was inevitable. But I aim to correct this as much as possible.

The Fold is a player group, not so much a faction, that has the specific role of smuggling. Note that smuggling is not restricted to hauling Cardamine and slaves: it covers everything from transporting illegal organs to sneaking through the borders between the warring Houses. In order to accomplish this, the Fold intends to employ a wide range of ships, almost specifically freighters. Most freighters are considered little more than starting vehicles with small holds, but to the Fold they are the lifeblood of the industry, for only a nimble freighter, packed with illegal sensors and weapons, could slip through the noose of both the law and the underworld.

In order to make the act of smuggling worthwhile, in an interesting sense rather than a financial one, the Fold will employ a number of measures:

1) Smuggling is performed under an organized system through which multiple ships and scouts/escorts can cooperate to evade detection and ultimately deliver the goods. While lone-wolf piloting can help in some instances, backup is always a good idea, and teamwork between players is the hallmark behind role-playing. The Fold makes this possible for smugglers.

2) The act of smuggling will eventually be incorporated directly into server-wide RP with various other player groups and factions. Hauling a load of Black Market Weapons will no longer reap just a cash reward, but will garner the respect of its recipient. Conversely, by being an independent group, members of the Fold are not under the restrictions of the official factions at any point: they are free to be Libertonian, Rheinlander, Bretonian, Kusari, and Zoner alike, flying a host of freighters encompassing a wide range of affiliations, but all under the banner of the Fold. It is an escape from the typical, and a challenge to stand alone.

3) All finances are entirely self-contained at all times: money gained through the actual act of smuggling will be put towards everything from upgrading an individual pilots ship to furthering the expansion and progress of the Fold itself through a percentage cut towards an organization-specific pool. While this may seem unappealing to some players consider this: by entering this group with a fully outfitted smuggling ship and with no intention of providing money to the Fold itself, you would be just as well off smuggling alone. By forcing members to start from bare bones and actually work to earn the organizations keep, it gives everyone a reason to smuggle, and smuggle well. Not only will they need it to replace that Mule with a Camara, but the percentage cut that goes to the Fold itself will be put towards aiding new recruits and financing larger schemes should the group ever progress that far. RPGs are all about building up from nothing: the Fold places the build up of the organization in the hands of every one of its members.

In sum total, as explained before, this group is an effort to make the act of smuggling worthwhile. It allows smugglers to join a non-faction specific group and coordinate, it allows smugglers to specialize in their job, and gloat about how many bounty hunters they duped rather than how many kills theyve got, and most of all it allows smugglers to take part in the natural creation and progression of an underworld crime group from the bottom of the barrel to the top of the hill, provided it survives the attempt.

Player Information

Suffice it to say that in the effort to perform smuggling operations, and perform them well, keeping oneself distant from the official factions is a blessing in disguise, as it means no member of the Fold would have to run around with Outcasts hanging over their head and sitting in their hold. The members of the Fold are predominantly anonymous to everyone else except for the members themselves: the IFF is Freelancer, the IDs are generic and nondescript, and no tags are displayed next to our ships. In this way the Fold is truly an independent group of criminals, surely an exclusive one, but present nonetheless: if one of our ships passes a policeman who is left none the wiser, we have done our job.

Technology

The Fold specializes in smuggling, and is not directly supported by any faction or group in order to maintain autonomy and survive based on its own merits. The natural result is that its available equipment is limited, but it is all that the Fold would ever need to use.


Ships

Light Fighters These are reserved for seasoned smugglers who decide to be off-duty for a short time. Light fighters are cheap and easy to maintain, and provide a great capacity towards rapid support of a smuggler in need as well as acting as a forward scout or informant. The Fold is meant to smuggle, not to fight, however, so killing the enemy is not the objective: catching them, distracting them, and leaving them in the dust is. Light fighters are therefore perfect for the job.

Renzu Corp Ki
CTE-4000 Griffin
Series CX Scimitar
X4TS Tiger Shark
CLI-11000 Arrow


Bombers In the event the Fold progresses to a larger organization, it may be necessary to employ several bombers in order to protect an organized smuggling convoy. Naturally any civilian bomber on the market would fit the bill nicely; they would perform the same harassment operations as the light fighters would, except that these bombers deal with capital ships.

XB-2 Havoc Mk II
WAR-4b Waran
CTE-19000 Roc


Freighters Small, agile, fast, freighters are the standard bearers for the Fold. While they cannot haul great tonnages of cargo, these smuggling freighters are usually the most heavily modified machines in space, cobbled together based on the will of their pilots and employed in the dangerous trade that is the smugglers lot in life. Each freighter has its own pros and cons, from its modifying capability to its outward appearance and faction intonations; true smugglers know that there is more to the trade than the size of ones hold.

Z-1138 Mule
EL-HiL27 Rhino
203-ARKM-B5 Humpback
B-27-E Clydesdale
J20P-21F Drone
CTE FR-2302-K
DSE-720 Camara
Z-6150 Bactrian
Series YX Dromedary
Renzu Corp Anki


Transports These ships, expensive as they are, are hardly the smugglers dream: they are large and slow, making them easy targets for bounty hunters, police, and pirates alike. Only the most daring of smugglers would choose to pilot one of these ships, which is perhaps the sole reason for doing so. However, should the Fold expand into a sizeable organization it is conceivable that an occasional smuggling convoy would be created in order to move large quantities of cargo to clients in a single trip, and therefore large transports would be a necessary, albeit very dangerous, element.

K60P-27T Bumblebee
EL-HiL51 Mammoth
B-40-E Percheron
568-ARKG-B6 Behemoth
J90P-54HT Big Dragon
Firefly Transport
DL Series Transport
Pirate Transport
Pirate Train


Weapons and Equipment

"Any and All" would describe this category. Smugglers by nature do whatever they can to avoid the law and their underworld competitors, so outfitting their rides is a predictable response. As such, the Fold employs essentially anything it can get its hands on: equipment procurement is not centralized, so the individual smugglers are free to use whatever they see fit. However, in terms of the server's rules it should be noted that many of the generic IDs that the Fold will use prohibit the use of a large number of weapons. But provided the group takes shape and grows, there is no doubt that underhanded requests for weapons use will be sent left and right to official factions of every stripe. Of course, mounting Hornvipers and Vengeances on your freighter might not be the smartest choice, but it means more firepower, which means it's a safer choice.

Recruitment and Demands on Members

The Fold, while not necessarily groundbreaking is, to my knowledge, unlike every other faction out there. Our role is specific to a relatively unpopular trade, and this demands a great deal of role-playing ability to make up for it. While most of the time our smugglers will not be conversing with the authorities we slip by, it is my desire that plenty of role-playing be done within the group itself. A smuggler is a curious individual who has decided to take a shady and treacherous path towards fame and wealth; our ability to mimic that character is essential.

Also, I am well aware of the ramifications of point three explained in the previous passages: this group is not meant for extreme profit, but for the creation and development of a crime group. Your wages will be small, your ships will be small and frail until you can afford to upgrade them, and the cut of your profits that goes to the Folds pool (no matter how small the cut may really be) might be interpreted as something of a detriment, but it is for the sake of building the group by its own merits. If you think this is merely a method of extorting money for my own devilish schemes, bear in mind that I can make more money in a trader doing an easy job in five minutes than I can as a smuggler running Artifacts from one end of Sirius to another. Moneys only role in this group is to build the group from scratch.

So, enoughs been said. This idea is ambitious and unorthodox in strange ways, and I hope some find it appealing. In the case that you do, you may find that joining it will be just as unorthodox:

In order to join, you will not have to fill out a form and wait for a PMd response. What youll need to do is devise your character and then sell it to me. Im going to see you in Skype for a real-time job interview that will test not only your ability to devise a good character but to role-play it on the spur of the moment, as if you were in-game. It is very geeky, and it will be involved; even actions and observations will be used, bracketed between asterisks. *raises eyebrow* Needless to say, I wasnt lying when I said I want the RP within this group to be exceptional.

Yes this whole thing is weird. Yes it is kind of bogus, and yes it has a high chance of failing because nobody likes it. But thats not my call. Its Yours.

Send me a PM if you want to get interviewed.

Things to Consider for the Interview

Character At the core of it all is your actual character, in-RP I mean. Since the Fold intends to start small, with all money self contained, your character must as well: either theyre just starting, switching from another trade, or what have you. But beyond that its all in the air; the Fold will accept virtually any character, from any House, of any gender, with (virtually) any quirk. Be creative. Make a smuggler. (Just dont copy Han Solo)

Setting Itll take place in a small office onboard Barrier Gate Station, not exactly the cleanest or nicest of spots. Not only will you need to come up with the reason how you got there but youll need to act as your character would while surrounded by Heavens rejects.

Response Your response is what Ill be gauging your suitability by. This includes not only the substance of your character but how you present it on a moments notice. The ability to be a character on the spur of the moment is essential. Also remember that since bracketed actions and descriptions will be involved, your mannerisms and appearance will also have an effect on your presentation.

Questions There will be mostly basic stuff, like where youre from, why youre here, all that. Where it diverges will be up to your characters responses, and I do hope that it diverges, because it means your character has some depth.






If you have any questions about how I intend for this group to work, feel free to ask in this thread.