Post by storyteller0910 on Nov 6, 2007 15:50:17 GMT -5
MAFIA: NEW CANAAN
The Blade Runner Game
The Blade Runner Game
Once Upon a Time...
The year is 2026. The lessons of the L.A. Replicant Murders are only seven years old, but already those lessons have been both well-learned and well-forgotten. To be sure, the development and manufacture of Replicants - genetically engineered beings indistinguishable from normal humans on sight or casual acquaintance - was suspended by Presidential fiat in the aftermath of 2019. A rash of brutal murders, coupled with the near downfall of human civilization, tends to lead to an unusual supply of political caution, at least in the near term. But no mistake, no matter how egregious, is so memorable that it cannot be repeated by the well-meaning or the greedy.
In 2023, a group of human settlers, working on a dangerous terraforming operation on one of the increasing number of off-world colonies, encountered what the subsequent Congressional Joint Investigational Committee Report would call “a catastrophic electronic device malfunction,” causing all 23 colonists to experience what the Report termed “complete failure to continue respiratory and circulatory processes.” The accident caused massive ripples of discontent in Earthbound society. Why, the advocacy groups wondered, were fully-human workers engaged in dangerous tasks like terraforming in the first place? Some lonely voices called for the dismantling of the government’s Off World Colonization Program (OWCP), but the many businesses and individuals who had drawn a considerable profit from the OWCP protested such a step in the most strenuous of terms. Their protests, along with the generous application of financial advocacy from the wealthiest of the profiteers, led the more pragmatic of the Earthbound politicians to consider an alternative solution: Replicants.
Replicants, the politicians reasoned, were stronger and hardier than humans, and could stand up to the rigors of terraforming and related tasks with less complaint. They could feel no human emotion, and thus found no task too degrading - or too ethically questionable - to perform.
Within a few months the order suspending Replicant development was rescinded. The laboratories and the factories that had lain dormant for four years resumed their work, churning out line after line of perfectly modeled artificial humans. The new line of Replicants was put to work off-world in jobs deemed too dangerous or too degrading for humans. Replicant R&D continued, leading to the development of Replicants capable of ever-more complex functions. And of course, the artificial beings’ enhanced strength, exceptional endurance, superhuman sensory acuity, and utter dispensability made them ideal candidates for certain key extralegal tasks - nonjudicial state-sponsored killings, for example, or interrogation, or espionage.
And of course, the manufactured perpetrators of these acts felt no fear beforehand, no compassion during, and no remorse afterward. They were Replicants; they felt nothing.
Now surely, no one could have predicted that having conscienceless superpowered killers blending freely with the human population could go wrong again, but go wrong it did. The first rogue Replicants were outliers - individual Replicants who developed a sense of individuality and desire for freedom, broke from their handlers and disappeared into society. Without remorse or empathy, these rogues often resorted to violence against humans - not out of cruelty, but merely following the dictates of their own nature. As they had prior to 2019, local governments appointed Blade Runners - uniquely trained members of the law enforcement division - to deal with the rogues. Blade Runners were a combination detective and assassin, able to ferret out Replicants through careful investigative techniques and the use of sophisticated personality tests, and armed and well-trained enough to kill - or to “retire,” in the standard parlance - any Replicants they find.
In late 2025, Scott Engineering released a new model Replicant: the Nexus-9 - the first model capable of simulating fully developed human emotions. The Nexus-9 was introduced to a fascinated public early one afternoon; by the next morning it had disappeared from Scott’s laboratories, killing three scientists and a late night security guard in the process.
Over the next few months, the Nexus-9 observed the world and it learned. The new Replicant had an incredibly powerful analytic mind to go with its carefully falsified emotions, and was stronger by a factor of two than any of its predecessors. It grew disgusted by the second-class treatment given its sibling Replicants, and planned revolution in miniature. Eventually, it conceived a plan. The Nexus-9 gathered a small group of rogue Replicants - each uniquely specialized in some way. It secured them false names and identifications, and scattered the group on four separate flights to the OWC called New Canaan. There, the Nexus-9 reasoned, the Replicants could reunite, and achieve equality within the human population - forcibly if necessary.
In 2026, the acting Governor of New Canaan was called from his bed in the dead of the night to witness an unpleasant spectacle - three of New Canaan’s leading ministers had been murdered in their homes overnight. From the carnage, it was evident that some among the last two or three shipments of colonists bound for New Canaan must have been rogue Replicants. Although the Governor tried to keep a lid on the slaughter, word began to leak out and panic took command of New Canaan. Rumors flew: The Governor had seen someone killed by Replicants! No, the Governor himself had been killed by a Replicant! No, the Governor was a Replicant!
Word spread to Earthbound society, and incoming colonists found reasons to choose other destinations. Finally, the Governor stood before all of New Canaan one fine morning to announce firmly that yes, he had heard the rumors, but no, they were not true. Ministers Ford, Young, and Pike had simply all suffered heart attacks. On the same evening. Heart attacks that resulted in decapitation. It happens. An unfortunate coincidence, of course. But, the Governor added confidently, there were no rogue Replicants in New Canaan.
Of course, the power of the Governor’s statement was undermined somewhat when he himself was ripped into seven equally-sized pieces by Replicants that very same night.
The following day, the portion of the New Canaan population that had not already fled for the metaphorical hills gathered together to discuss the problem via tele-sat with Earthbound authorities. But the town stared in silence at blank screens; no answer from Earth was forthcoming. Eventually, the telescreens lit up with an Earthbound news broadcast, captured by a New Canaan hacker and broadcast now for all to see - the people of Earth were at that very moment being told that the town of New Canaan had been destroyed by volcanic eruption. In order to contain the Replicant problem and hide it from the people of Earth, the government had abandoned New Canaan to whatever fate it could salvage.
The only hope for the human citizens of New Canaan was to identify and retire the Replicants in their midst. On the down side, the only widely available means of distinguishing a Replicant from a normal human was via autopsy. On the up side, New Canaan was fortunately equipped with a fully-functioning electric chair, ideal for frontier lynchings. Also, rumor had it that a Blade Runner was hidden among the colonists on one of the recent immigrant ships; although if this was true, the potential savior of New Canaan was quite silent at the moment.
Other rumors held that a few of the descendants of the founders of New Canaan had returned to assist the town their fathers built; these few were unknown to the rest of the town, but quite familiar to one another from their childhoods. A variety of other townsfolk had skills and abilities that could be turned toward the hunt for Replicants, although they wisely kept those skills to themselves until the proper time for revelation was at hand.
Sadly, not every resident of this colony shared the intentions and goals of the colony as a whole. Like in every frontier town, corruption abounded in New Canaan, and there were those who would twist the Replicant uprising toward their own ends. The colony found itself rudderless, leaderless, and plagued by enemies from without and within.
The story of New Canaan begins here.
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Sign-ups are now officially open. You may sign-up for the game by posting to this thread; the game has space for 25 players, and spots will be filled on a first-post-first-served basis.
I'll randomize roles and assign them approximately one week following the conclusion of the currently active (Firefly) game, provided we have ample interest.
Right now, seven players have already reserved spots; they are:
1. NAF1138
2. dotchan
3. Kat
4. hockey monkey
5. Roosh
6. Yattara
7. atarus
NOTE: The contents of the introduction above, along with a forthcoming post on the basic gameplay rules, will be the extent to which this setup is open.