Background:

The Republican criminal justice system is not the most efficient, by design.  The system was originally designed to rehabilitate, and while it retains that capacity, it is now used to punish.  Because of this there are two kinds of prisons, which would not exist in an efficient system: the labor mine and the penal colony.  In the former robots could more efficiently mine in hazardous environments without the need for supervision.  In the latter, the cost of transport is rarely worth the effort.  In both cases, it would be more efficient to simply execute the prisoners.  But the current rulers of the Republic prefer the terror and hopelessness inspired by these two forms of punishment.

Invictus Prison on the toxic mining world of Noricum Prime is a labor mine.  It also has facilities for rehabilitation and traditional incarceration, and is designed to handle the full range of penal work.  But it is most famous for the mines.  It is also the last stop for prisoners bound for the penal colony on Cygnus Omega.  Noricum Prime is an arcology world.  That is, the population lives in a series of self-contained city/buildings called arcologies, linked together by a network of magnetic levitation train tubes.  Invictus Prison is its own arcology with landing pads for the transfer ships.

Noricum Prime is also the sector capitol of the Noricum Sector, a spherical region roughly 50 parsecs in radius in the Scythia Province, the farthest province to the Galactic North-East of Terra Secundus.  Scythia Province is on the border with the alien Parthian Empire and the Kingdom of Armenia, and Cygnus Omega is in the Cygnus Sector, the farthest system claimed by the Republic in this direction.  In short, Cygnus Omega is as far as you can get from the center of the Republic and still be in the Republic.

Opening Scene: Invictus Prison

A Republican holding cell, Invictus Prison, Noricum Prime.  The cell is 20m by 10m, has 10 padded benches and 20 prisoners.  The walls are tan, the padding on the benches is orange.  The north wall is a force field, on the south wall is a door with no lock or mechanism.  All tof these prisoners have been sentenced to a life term on Cygnus Omega, the Prison Planet.  The transfer ship was heard landing a few minutes ago outside the south door.

Among the prisoners:
• A man of Roman or Achaean descent, fair-skinned, physically fit but not athletic, with short brown hair neatly trimmed, wearing archaic-style eyeglasses.
• An alien with the appearance of a bipedal lizard, scales in shades of green and brown, a tail sticks out through a hole in his jumpsuit.
• A large human with a short mohawk, tattoos evident at his wrists and neckline, a scar on the right side of his face, powerfully built, tanned skin.  Two other men, nearly as large and nasty in attitude, stay close to him.
• There is only one woman in the group: Marcia Valeria.

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Post an introduction for your character, a physical description, mannerisms, what they are doing, etc.  The first prisoner brought to this room arrived about 5 hours ago, the last about 15 minutes ago.  Depending on how ling you were here you may know each other.  Marcia would have been one of the last, as the only woman in the bunch.  The prisoners are of every ethnic and racial combination on Earth today, all wearing orange prison jumpsuits and velcro-tied white sneakers.

Marcia is a slender woman of smaller than average height. The orange jumpsuit hangs loosely on her, and the blocky rubber shoes give her the air of a poorly dressed doll.  Her tanned skin, black hair, and angular facial features was common among the Patricians and little changed since the Roman Empire was concerned with the conquest of Gaul. She was still well-groomed; her black hair braided and pinned with plastic pins around her head and her hands regularly manicured. She sits silently on the padded bench with a blank expression, her posture as dignified and elegant as a senator on a newscast. But the blankness of her expression suggests that she is just awaiting the completion of her execution.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:05, Fri 31 Dec 2021.

In a prison built in large part to contain and punish the non human under class finding unusual looking aliens is hardly rare.  Almost all of those aliens have a small and even number of arms and legs some combination of smaller finger like extensions from those arms, and a whole complex network of bones designed to make them all work together, and nobody finds that odd.

What is odd is the grey sphere of a sort of semi rigid flesh that has been sitting in the corner for a while, what look something like eyes or nexus of some kind that look out on the vertebrates watching them walk around on feet in a very small range of movement styles, almost as if it is studying them.

The prisoner looks around his cell, clearly assessing the chance to escape. Although he's the same average height of other Humans, his stocky build and light blue skin color mark his as... different. He also mentally evaluates the other prisoners to try and decide which ones might be allies and which ones might just be useless.

Most of the other prisoners don't look particularly friendly, so he slowly moves over to the woman.

"Greetings," he says to her. "My name is Rurik. You have the look of someone who is expecting to die soon. Do you truly believe that is your future?"
This message was last edited by the player at 04:01, Tue 04 Jan 2022.

Marcia turned towards Rurik slowly, watching him with a calm, tranquil expression. It seems artistically designed to be difficult to read -- thanks to her army of tutors. Rurik's question only merited the slightest tilt of her head, and the unhurried comment, "It is, of course, everyone's future. Charon's ferry is the only ship carrying prisoners away."

She might as well be commenting on the weather.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:38, Tue 04 Jan 2022.

"Charon's Ferry? What is that? A ship?" Rurik replied. "Is it going to take us somewhere?"

He was still confused about what had happened and how he'd wound up here. He wasn't even sure where 'here' was. He was an explorer. The last thing he remembered was... he wasn't even sure about that. It was all kind of blurry in his mind.

Marcia blinks twice very quickly, and she pauses to gauge whether Rurik is being purposefully obtuse. "No." She hesitates, giving him a second look."It means that death is the only way to leave this place."

"Sorry, Miss, I'm not that fatalistic," Rurik replies. "I may not fully understand what's going on or know how I got here, but, while Death comes for us all in the end, I plan on avoiding it as long as I can."

"Do you know who any of these other... prisoners are?"

The lizard alien approaches Argot sitting in his corner.  Crouching down before it he addresses the dralasite.  "You and I, it would seem, are sufficiently different from the others to perhaps find common ground?  Do you speak the human tongues?"  he asks.  His voice is soft and it is clear his mouth and vocal structure allows for all the usual human sounds and perhaps more without accent.

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Awareness - Intuition or Perception rolls please.

Adjusting its shape as much as rolling backwards to orient the two eye regions upward to look at the lizard the gray mound of flesh also opens what must be a mouth of some kind to speak in a reasonable approximation of the aforementioned human language.
”I do indeed speak the language of those who have transported us here.  Do you wish anything other than conversation from our so called common?”
This message was last edited by the player at 03:01, Sat 08 Jan 2022.

Marcia isn't sure if he's playing dumb or actually dumb. So she gives him the diplomatically opaque answer, "I am sure that mere mathematics cannot easily burden you, with your prodigious strengths."  She pauses to listen to the eloquent lizard person. His accent merits a slight, elegant lift of her eyebrow. She responds unhurriedly, "I do not know anyone here. At least not yet.  But quite a few of us seem to possess a certain eloquence. I would not be surprised if our cohort is well seasoned with those who have political enemies or have seen something inconvenient to the powerful and corrupt."

She pauses, and gives him an appraising look before advising.  "If you truly do not know why you are here, consider whether you have seen something unusual or gained an enemy-- most likely within the past few months."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:19, Sat 08 Jan 2022.

"I do not have any enemies that I know of, though I suppose whoever is responsible for me being here is probably an enemy," Rurik replies.

"In the same vein, while I may have seen something that I was not supposed to see, I am not aware of any such observation. How would I know if I did see such an occurrence?"

"So, why are you here, if you don't mind my asking?"

She notices her slight attention to the lizard-human, glances in that direction, and notices for the first time that the blob in the corner is actually another prisoner. He'd heard of a Dra'al but thought they were fictional creatures.

"So that's what a Dra'al looks like."

Marcia ignores his question, dismissing it with a decisive flick of her hand. Even Marcia, who has little tutoring in the dubious etiquette of criminals, knows that one does not ask casual acquaintance about money or legal entanglements. "Perhaps you should try thinking about the events that lead you to your predicament." There was a touch of exasperation in her voice. "Silently, perhaps over there.." Marcia suggested as she gestured to a bench on the other side of the room.