The fleet sent to begin the Third Invasion was sent generations ago.
In just under twenty years, the first ships will be arriving at the nearest Formic worlds.
By this time, the International Fleet had hoped that a promising commander would be found and plucked from the vast swaths of gifted children recruited into their Battle School, but there had been no such luck. Not even the graduates of Command School had shown enough tactical and strategical brilliance to be put in charge of the Third Invasion.
They haven't bothered hiding their desperation: there have been increases in the size and frequency of shuttle launches to Battle School. The young, robust Colonel Graff is beginning to show signs of strain as he searches desperately for the potential savior of the human race.
You've been ripped from your family, your home, and your planet, but you know why you've been taken. You know that there's a chance - a small chance, but a chance nonetheless - that you will be needed.
For someday, someone will have to put an end to the Formic race, before they put an end to us.
GENERAL POLICIES
1) Be respectful of yourself, be respectful of your peers, be respectful of me, but - most important of all - be respectful of the story that we are building together. Help advance the plot, don't try to twist it, don't try to pervert our creation. If I ask you not to do something, I have a reason for doing so. I may be trying to prevent you from breaking canon. Because this RP is based on Ender's Game and the series that followed it, there are in-character rules to follow. If you aren't familiar with the series, feel free to ask me for help. Consider me a resource at your disposal: I am here to help you build a story out of the scenario I have set for you.
2) I am allowing you all great freedom, because this is an RP, but there is one thing that I will have to insist on maintaining complete and total, unbroken personal control over: official International Fleet personnel. Only I may control the teachers and staff of Battle School and any visiting I.F. officials. I control when and if your characters become commanders (leaders of an army, as assigned by the Battle School officials). You may request to be in the same army (a competitive group who do simulated battle with one another for higher public standings) as another character, but I hold the verdict on that. Of course, if someone else is your commander, they are free to transfer you and change your position within their army as they like. Unless otherwise stated, you should ask my permission before becoming a toon leader, because your character may not be ready for it.
3) I know I sound like a bit of a small-time dictator - "I control this and you control that and you ask me about the other things and these limits are in place" - but I promise you, my goal is to weave a tale that we will all glean many hours of enjoyment from, and hopefully to teach you all something about roleplaying and, in fact, writing as a whole while I'm at it. If you aren't having fun, one of us is doing something wrong, so you should speak up. I want to make this an enjoyable experience for everyone involved. That is my real job as the leader of this little RP group.
APPLICATION FORM
I will only be accepting six characters - seven if you include my own, who will be a driving force in the story and keeping the rest of the characters on track. Realize that I am not attempting to upstage anyone with my character. I simply wish to keep the RP going in the vague direction I intended it to, and I wish to provide support and commentary from within the story.
Name:[First and last: no exceptions there. You may include a nickname if you wish, but realize that your character may gain a new nickname or his/her old one may be changed by his/her peers based on how he/she looks and what he/she does. That is the nature of Battle School. They may never recieve a nickname for all we know.] Gender:[Of the six characters that will be allowed, only a maximum of three may be female. This is because the vast majority of Battle School students are male: technically, less than a tenth are female, but for the purposes of this RP I'm willing to push it to half of the main characters if such a number is necessary to hold onto the best roleplayers that apply.] Age: 6 years, 0 months Appearance:[I want to know height, I want to know weight, I want hair color, hair style, eye color, hell, I want the shape of their left nostril if you're willing to get that detailed. A minimum of five sentences is required here, unless you can give me a full description in less.] Background:[Nationality, hometown, ancestry, family, financial situation, whatever seems important probably is. It is to be assumed that at the very least, linguistically, all characters can speak both their native language and I.F. Common (English).]
Was that not quick and painless? I could have required personality and history, but here's the thing: I want you to reveal that through your writing. I want us to build a story together, I don't want a bunch of self-declared child-heroes running around who will just as quickly act against their so-called personality as they would with it.
Also, you know how most RPGs accept just anyone? Well this is an RP, and I want the best. If your application isn't up to snuff, expect me to request that you revise it. And if you refuse, I'm sure someone else would be happy to take your place. There are no "reserved spots", you see. The first six applications that meet my standards will be the only six characters that I accept, unless someone needs to be replaced or a latecomer really impresses me.
CLOSING WORDS
Respect.
Comradery.
Brilliant storytelling.
These are what I want: you all to respect me, one another, and yourselves; us as a group to feel comfortable enough to roleplay effectively with one another; and a unique, well-written tale to unfold before us. I want you to have fun, and I want to have some fun myself.
Together, I want all seven of us - for I do hope to reach the maximum six applicants, and I intend to remain in this RP to the end - to have a good time with whatever it is we end up turning this RP into.
We will begin when we have a total of three accepted characters, not including myself.
Name: Soren Reuter Gender: Male Age: 6 years, 0 months Appearance: At three feet and ten inches in height, Soren is just over the average height for his age. However, his weight is actually slightly below average: you see, Soren weighs only forty pounds, about half a dozen less than most boys his age. His golden-blonde, shoulder-length hair frames a thin, angular face, severe in shape but with a vaguely friendly aura about it. Soren's face is the kind that, on a more serious individual, would look mean, but on someone as relaxed and open-minded as him, actually seems relatively personable. Blue eyes with a hint of green would serve to complete his "master race"-esque appearance, if not for his angled aquiline nose, which reveals the other side of his ancestry, as does his skin, which for the moment holds a light tan from being on Earth. With no sunlight to maintain it, though, that won't last long in Battle School... Background: Soren is a German Jew by ancestry, though his family is, for the most part, atheist, in terms of religious belief. He comes from an upper-middle-class household in Berlin, with a single older brother who is also gifted but didn't show the necessary traits to be taken into Battle School. His German accent is subtle because of his mental aptitude: it's certainly noticeable, but not very pronounced.
[This is roughly the level of detail I expect from you all - more or less is alright, as long as you can get the basic details across. I want to be able to imagine your character as well as you can, and if I've done my job as a writer well enough, you are now able to imagine mine just as well.
Also: I do, in fact, expect you to bold the listings as I did, and all ooc (out-of-character) chat is to be enclosed in brackets like so. Italicization will not be necessary, and once your application has been accepted, you may post it without the bolded listings, because... bolding it over and over again every post could get pretty tedious. But if you edit any part, you should bold it for that post so that your fellow roleplayers know what changed. And as time passes, your characters' appearance will change. People grow, you know. So expect to be asked to update it minorly during significant time skips.]
As a small summary for SirNoonalot, the book takes place in the future 50 or so years after attacks from an alien race known as buggers. it is believed that they will strike again at any moment, so 5-6 year olds that show some talent for strategy and fighting are pretty much drafted into battle school, an academy designed to teach kids how to wage war.
Hmmm,,, How long will these time skips be? I mean, I don't want to spend weeks and weeks in real-world time still playing a 6-year-old.
You have to realize that these six-year-olds are incredibly gifted - and trust me when I say there will be no shortage of interesting stories to weave. But at a rough guess, they should reach the age of seven within a month, assuming all players are fairly active.
And tell me about the world of Ender's Game. I've always wanted to read it but have always forgotten about the series each time.
Farrowking gave a decent summary, although I shall give my own which is... more relevant to the RP.
The Formics attacked in the First Invasion, devastating China and forcing humankind to form the International Fleet to combat them. This ends all real conflict on Earth - publicly, at least - and the I.F. becomes the dominant force, under the Hegemony, which is the government of humankind.
Fifty years later or so, after the humans narrowly defeated the First Invasion fleet, the Second Invasion begins. However, Mazer Rackham and his small fleet quickly manage to defeat the Formic fleet, stopping them once and for all.
Spoilers incoming: the I.F. sends an attack fleet to the Formic homeworld, set to arrive some sixty to eighty years after the Second Invasion. This is the Third Invasion. However, despite having the fleet already deployed, they lack a commander with the intelligence and military adeptness to command it effectively.
This is why the Battle School is formed. It tests infants on Earth, and if they meet its standards, they are offered the choice to come to Battle School (unless they are an illegal child, in which case they have no rights and are in fact drafted). They spend about two years in Ground School and then, at the age of six, are sent into space with their launch group to attend Battle School.
Farrowking was wrong on a few points, but it's understandable, because during the events of Ender's Game they were rushing the main characters through the training program, because the invasion fleet was literally less than a decade from arrival at the Formic homeworld.
