I played as the geneticist, first thing I did once I got off the arrival shuttle was to get a warm cup of coffee off the coffeemate before making my way to the medbay, saying hi to anyone I bump into along the way, be it stranger or familiar faces. I saw the captain in the bridge busy staring at the console screen, security chilling in the hallway, clown squeaking about making crayon art, a MULE bot slowly making its way to its destination with a sealed crate on top of it and the distant sounds of a RIPLEY footstep echoing further down the hallway.
Once in my workplace, I started getting to work trying to make a super soldier out of a monkey after having turned it into a human and running all sorts of unethical experiment on it. From the windows, I could catch glimpses of the CMO and their doctors busy wheeling a dismembered engineer off to the surgical room as he gasped for air.
On the crew manifest at this point of the shift, there were over 60 crewmembers in total.
Then suddenly, the station switched to Blue alert, nobody knows why (this is back when the station's alert is green by default). Some of us asked over the radio on what's going on, but we get vague answers, some say that a corpse was discovered, then there were talks about a syndicate infiltrator on board, or a rampaging wizard. Then came the faint booming sound of explosions rocking the station, people started panicking a bit over the radio.
I on the other hand tried to ease my worry by getting myself some food and cigarette at the bar after having turned my monkey test subject into a telekinetic vacuum resistant hulk.
Fast forward a few minutes later, I found myself walking through the corridor now splattered with blood and the dismembered or disfigured corpses of the crew, many of whom I just met and talked with not long after I got off the arrival shuttle. The lights were all flashing red as the alert level was escalated to red.
Even to this point, I, along with perhaps half of the station that were still alive still couldn't quite identify what are the threats. On the radio, people were scared and screaming, begging for Centcomm to send the emergency shuttle.
I return to the medbay to find every single medical staff scattered and dead, a patient I saw earlier having been turned into a pile of bones and ashes on the very same roller bed that he was brought in with.
Soon, the emergency shuttle was called and the HoP announced that the captain is dead and asked for everyone to gather in the evacuation wing.
I made myself there to find what's left of the station crew, all battered and nervous, barely a quarter of the number that was present at the start of the shift. The remnants of the security team, now in full armor and armed with lethal weapons started to set up a defensive barricade. The shuttle was a few minutes out at this point.
Things were quiet for the moment as we waited nervously, and as soon as the shuttle docked and we were about to sigh in relief, the maintenance airlock nearby burst open. From the darkness, emerges a cyborg with humanoid frame. I stood confused along with a few other civilians.
The security officers wasted no time, they started frantically opening fire on the borg who shrugged off the bullets with ease as it casually drew a pulse rifle, pulverizing the security forces in under a minute before turning the gun on the civvies.
We all started screaming as we tried to cram our way into the shuttle, the borg casually picking us off one at a time from the windows. We managed to weld the airlocks shut as soon as we enter, buying us just enough time for the shuttle to take off and escape the station.
As soon as the shuttle entered bluespace, we all sighed in relief when suddenly, an inconspicuous backpack laying on the floor beeped once before exploding, immediately gibbing half of the passengers and hurling the rest into vacuum, I was among them. At this point, only the handful who managed to hack their way into the shuttle cockpit managed to reach Centcomm in one piece. Thus end a round.
Then came the next round, it rolled into an Extended round. A short respite from the chaos that we all just endured which will inevitably happen again.
This was the experience I remember fondly when I started playing SS13 back around 2012, this was on a server that pride itself a medium to heavy roleplay too. Back then, even for M/HRP, people were mostly chill and doesn't take the game very seriously, most players did have a static or two, but weren't overtly attached, every round had a varied level of chaos and players often played knowing that there's a very high probability that they're going to die horribly, but that's all part of the fun.
I've been seeking this same experience on the present servers we have on the hub, but somehow none of them quite scratch the itch.
They're either HRP snoozefest, a furry ERP sexden, or a No or Low RP minmax fragger server. Maybe the experience I crave is too specific, it's like the middle ground of every of the servers above.
