wip;;

i. forum rules. follow all forum and proboard rules.

ii. literacy. literate/lazy lit. At least have proper spelling, grammar, and post structure; quality over quantity.

iii. post content. please keep it PG/PG-13. Skip is your friend. No godmodding, powerplaying, yadda yadda.

iv. courtesy. fighting outside of roleplay will not be tolerated.

v. characters. this may be the type of roleplay that lends itself to making "perfect" characters, but please refrain from doing so. Please try to only claim three roles right now. I will open more characters as I think of them. But for now claim up to three roles. If you have an idea for a character, I am all ears. When joining, go to the link below and make your characters in a post (separate ones preferred) to be linked to the main page.

vi. powers. first: all the current characters in the roleplay can still go to school and work and pass off as human right now. But feel free to be able to get creative on how they hide these. Think of the characters like the x-men. Some have powers and look human/change back into a human; some are minimally mutated with small abilities; and some have powers and don't look like they did as a human. I do want to see some variety with this between characters, and some roles a character is specified to be mutated. They must start off as still able to go about daily life looking normal; but roles may open up for characters who can't go into society anymore, your character could still be mutating and end up not able to go to out easily.

Truesdell University is like a prison disguised as a Liberal Arts college; it’s layout is many buildings that have to be meticulousy upkept to pass inspection and look almost archaic with their interiors. The dorms are co-ed with a shared bathroom. The student body tries to liven up the hallways and classrooms despite its cell-block-like nature. For example, the gym and physical education building: inside the first thing you notice when walking up the stairs is how bare the walls are, a plain baby powder blue and bare. The lockers to deposit items were gray and squeaked, echoing in the empty hallways from the renovated former middle school. The fresh fish and sophomores spent a majority of their day on the first floor, where the gym and pool and sparse classrooms were also located. The juniors and seniors spent their imprisonment upstairs, with the higher-tech machines and certain medical equipment for PT majors. The track just outside is run-down and on a slight slant; one courtyard is next to it and accessible for students to eat meals and take breaks. The other courtyard has been made into a garden, with little artistic touches all around.

Of course, that’s just what the website wants the school to be like: the most advancing school in the area, and best education they can offer.

Tough shit. Truesdell University is incarceration before (pardon the pun) true adulthood.

First, don’t go into the largest building in the center of campus if you value your morality and possibly life; it is like a modified dungeon with a chill in the air from the leaks in the window panes and the cement walls. Blue was a common theme, but the lights never work so it always looks dark. This building held the most majors: the ones that do not need the fancy equipment. You have your English, History, Anthropology, Sociology, Criminal Justice and General Education classrooms here. This is also where the ‘tough guys and gals hang’; aka the gangstas and your local everyday thug looking outcast. Don’t get it wrong, some of them are nice; but you’ll most likely find yourself sitting next to a drug deal or them talking about the Red Kings and shit.

Watch out for that one hallway in the STEM building; the one next to the Chemisty Lab. The camera’s are faulty. They say all the time ‘well the angle was off so we couldn’t see—blah blah blah ha’, the camera is dead and Truesdell staff don’t care. So watch your back there.

Then definitely; do not piss off Professor Kerrwood. First of all, that man has been teaching here for centuries. Don’t let his looks fool you. His class is dull and puts any right-minded student to sleep, and the moment you nod your head you’re slapped with a snarky comment about your value to education. Unfortunately, Professor Kerrwood teaches a lot of Gen Eds.

If you’re willing to tolerate this madness. We got jocks, culties, and those outcasts; civil and beat-the-shit-out-of-each-other rivalries. Come on in. Truesdell University is always looking for fresh meat for the slaughter.

There are many places for your average adult to hang out in Derby, Kansas. Derby, like many other cities, hosts many indoor restaurants, cafes, and local places. Anyone could be found anywhere; however, many Truesdell University have places where they end up habitually to the point of routine (due to student discounts or general social herding habits, up to you). And these are notable for mention.

McDonalds was, first and foremost, a pick up and take out joint. That being said, at some point between the mid-seventies and present day, some enterprising, charismatic individual had convinced the proprietor to add a pair of rickety tables and some loosely grouped matching lawn chairs to the limited space inside and outside. Most teenagers preferred the exterior, honestly—the air was thick and rich with the smell of cooking meat and fries, with a weird undercurrent you could only describe as Derby restaurant smell. Maybe it was unresolved romantic tension, or something.

The local adults-former-teenagers prefer to spend their times on the lawn and parking lot of McDonald’s; it was located in a nook of the city, right near the school on the opposite side of Main Street, and provided excellent shade with the few trees growing freely in the city limit, and too much parking space for a lot that was mostly empty. It was one of the safe zones in most of the Derby teenagers life, a place where things were largely unchanging, where they could return have their expectations met. Students from groups meet up there at different times, only dispersing when a police car drove by looking for suspicious activity to fill their quota.

The park was another local hang out of familiarity; the playground structure was old and rickety, and no parent should let their child grab ahold of the rust of the monkey bars. Most kids wound up at Sanders Sides park at some point in their life. During the day it’s open to play, at night you’ll often see the burning lights of a cigarette or joint; and hear the hushed whispers of Derby gossip from the older residents, sitting in precarious areas of the playground structure far above the ground. Forgotten ashes and buds falling into the dirt below.

And finally, The Sloppy Duck was the bar to be. If you like standing outside a crowded bar, smoking, talking, and then flicking your ashes away before crushing the butt beneath your toe before returning to the chaotic writhing sweaty mess inside: be my guest. However, The Sloppy Duck is the most bustling bar nearest the edge of town. Then there is the Crown && Crow settled near the middle of the city with the entrance starting in the shaded slley a few blocks off Main Street. It is said that Malcolm Dexter and his crew frequent that bar; it had low yellow lights and limited space in the front. A sports game would play on the television, but nobody went to Crown && Crow for the games. The bartender, Jibreel (or Jib for short) was a leary-eyed man with a fading sleeve and notable knuckle tattoos that spell “Game Over” when put together. He never threw any patrons out, however, he always had a wave of secrecy when directing certain patrons to the back of his bar.

Malcolm Dexter owns a city that he painted red; the Red Kings are a gang of rather dangerous residents of Derby, Kansas who predominantly reside on the east side of Derby. There are Red Kings that are dangerous criminals, however, there are just petty thieves and drug dealers among them who simply stir up public trouble in the Red Kings name, and recruit teenagers and young adults to learn their ways; their jackets flash a deep blood red—and some members yield a red spade tattooed into their wrist as a right of seniority.

Everyone knows of the Red Kings in Derby, Kansas. If not for the sketchy atmosphere, the graffiti displays their name from under bridges and in the depths of back lot alley’s up and down the city. Anyone with the right morals and sensibility would know to stay away from them; they were shielded and possessive of their turf, very rarely took well to just anyone trying to join (you had to be friend of a friend of a friend, at least), and there was always a scheme behind their events.

It didn’t mean no one showed up to their events; in fact, most of Truesdell University shows up if the gossip is thriving; and many Red Kings members are young enough to spread the news in the most logical fashion: text messages. The students of Derby and Truesdell are impressionable, their boring city livens up when one thing happens: a fight, murder, community center events, new hang out places, and Red King parties. It’s the talk of the crowd—and they sure do know how to bring a crowd in. Red King events mostly seclude themselves outside of Derby, Kansas; just off the interstate in abandoned stores, gas stations, and factories that have longed shut down when Derby went from the empire of factories to nothing—now all the jobs lay in Wichita, Kansas just 10 minutes away.

The gang members themselves mostly inhabit the condemned parking garage just off of main street next to the general hospital during the day and the Crown && Crow at night. A new parking garage had been built, but because of the layout of Derby, it was impossible to tear down the old one. Meetings and news spreads through the ranks of members as they pass each other in the garage or in the privacy of their own home; many members live in dilapidated, out-of-date Derby, Kansas apartment buildings near the east side outskirts of the city.

Malcolm Dexter, the most truly mad man of the Red Kings lives in his own with the privacy of only a few of his high ranking members knowing his location. Dexter barely submerges from the shadows to lead the Red Kings; the last time he appeared at an event had been the DEFCON 1 beginning of the school year party thrown at the old Derby Plastics Factory a mile out of the city.

That’s what they called them after DEFCON 1, and the subsequent ‘incident’ that happened that night, shaking Derby, Kansas to its very core. The parents were outraged calling from all over into Truesdell, the hospital was flooded with young adults, occasional teenager, and even those older and with a rather shakey reputation had filed through the doors of Derby General due to exposure to toxic waste and biohazardous air. People sobbed, some seethed and went after anyone who looked mildly gang orientated, the hospital was in chaos. It stayed that way for a long while, and anyone who wasn’t injured beyond a cut on their knee now protected by a Batman band-aid were cleared to go home.

The city of Derby was on national headlines. Local news gave reports and how-tos for exposure and possible volatile signs to radiation. Children, the parents said in despair at a local PTA and city council forums, influencable young adults (their children) were exposed because of the Red Kings and Malcolm Dexter.

Malcolm Dexter continues to have a wanted poster in the police station office. Rumor has it, he’s also on the FBI most wanted.

After DEFCON 1, clinics and doctors offices surged with exams and vaccinations. Anything to keep their kids safe, they said. Some left Truesdell University all together. A few oddball cases popped up here and there; blindness due to the gas, sore throats, flus, chicken pox and measles; everything was blamed on the Derby Plastics Factory explosion, but eventually the city quieted down; thinking their students were okay for the most part. They could go back to normal.

Oh how very wrong our parents are.

Some of us, Biohazard Babies; we aren’t sure what is happening to us. We became likened to the comics you see in the bookstore: with over-priced tags and a dying reader-base, something people rarely want anymore. Some of friends go to each other in confidence, showing us the flames that lick their finger-tips harmlessly. Or a patch of skin that turned into scales. We’ve became unusual, mutants that hide away in the shadows while our families think “safe for now”. Not all of us had this happen, not everyone at DEFCON 1 became freaks; many of the students of Truesdell remain unaffected with bright smiles and openness to who they are. Or at least, they seem that way.