r/whowouldwin • u/TheAsianIsGamin • Jul 19 '25
Event Character Scramble Season 20 Round 0: Eden Prime
To determine Roster Seeding, Round 0 writeups will be ranked from 1-5 by our esteemed panel of judges. Seeding scores will be determined by the judges’ averaged ranks of your stories, with higher ranks receiving higher seeds. All three judges will read all Round 0s.
Your Judges are: /u/TheAsianIsGamin, /u/Proletlariet, and /u/Talvasha
When judge voting goes up for this round, we'll have a WWW moderator lock the thread, preventing anyone from posting more. Make sure to get all of your writing done on time!
The Character Scramble is a long-running writing prompt tournament in which participants submit characters from fiction to a specified tier and guideline. After the submission period ends, the submitted characters are "scrambled" and randomly distributed to each writer, forming their team for the season. Writers will then be entered into a single-elimination bracket, where they write a story that features their team fighting against their opponent's team. Victors are decided based on reader votes; in other words, if you want people to vote for you, write some good content. The winner by votes of each match-up moves on to the next round. The pattern continues until only one participant remains: the new Character Scramble champion, who gets to choose the theme, tier, and rules of the next Scramble!
The theme of Character Scramble 20 is Scramble Effect. Round prompts will be based on the many worlds, missions, and memorable moments found throughout the Mass Effect series.
Join the Character Scramble Discord!
Round 0: Eden Prime
Lightyears away from where any of its ancestors once roamed, a rooster crows. The sun turns the purple of dawn into a bright, beautiful azure, and from within the arcologies that dot the land, efficient with both energy and space, the people rise just as slowly. There’s much work to be done, out there on the fields, but mornings like this are worth enjoying. The skies are clear, the land is fertile, and all is quiet. It’s hardly the most exciting corner of the galaxy—and that’s just the way it’s supposed to be.
Until an unexpected discovery turns this once-sleepy idyll into a flashpoint. At first, your team thinks this is a simple mission: Recover whatever it is they found, and slip out to get it where it needs to be before anyone can make a fuss.
But the moment your team makes it onto the planet, a firefight breaks out with an unforeseen enemy. Soon, it becomes clear: Something important has been unearthed, and someone wants it. Badly enough to kill for it.
Round Rules:.
Galaxy Map: Hundreds of billions of stars, each with its own system of planets. Your round doesn’t have to take place on an agrarian colony—or even on a sci-fi planet at all. But a season like this is about discovery as much as anything else. Start to show your audience where you’ve brought us.
Find the Beacon: Whether by being ordered to investigate it, or by chance, your team stumbles upon an object revealing something rather sinister. This object can be an artifact showing you visions, a murder weapon, written logs, a witness, or anything your story needs. But it has to be threatening—something your team never would have expected.
Don’t Worry. I’ve Got it Under Control: A contact or ally that your team expects to help instead betrays you. This contact must come from one of the Class Role Adoption Pools other than the one you adopt from.
The Price of Revenge: The traitor acts swiftly to take or destroy the object—without care for any bystanders or collateral damage. They set bombs, or a computer virus, or something else that would have disastrous effects for everybody around you. You must choose one of the following prompts:
- Paragon: There are lives at stake, right here, right now—and besides, you’ve already seen the evidence yourself. The powers that be will just have to believe you. Let the traitor escape, lose the object, and save lives.
- Renegade: Your newfound mission is too important. Hunt the traitor down, defeat them, and take the object back.
We Could Use Your Help: Your team comes with two characters, but you must select your third from the unscrambled characters of the Class you do not currently have, listed in tables below the roster here.
Normal Rules:
Stand Fast, Stand Strong, Stand Together: Nobody can take on a mission like this alone. You’ve got a team of the brightest, toughest, and deadliest allies a Scrambler can find—use them. We’d love to see your characters make full use of their wide-ranging abilities, both on their own and as a team.
We Will Hold The Line: You know what’s at stake. Failure is not an option. Even if your characters have only a small chance of victory, write that small chance happening!
Special Tactics and Reconnaissance: Saving the galaxy will take more than the same old tricks. You are allowed and encouraged to mix and match powers, and to develop your characters in any way you wish, both on the battlefield and off. However, your opponents are not expected to keep track of these in-story changes, and vice-versa.
Every Life Is a Special Story of Its Own: Feel free to give a brief summary to introduce your characters at the start of your post. If you do, you should mention things like powers, personality, history, and anything else that the average reader should know before reading.
Legendary Edition: Sometimes, Spectres have to go a little outside the lines in service of their mission. You’ll have the same latitude—as long as you go with the broad strokes of the prompts and the rules, you'll be fine.
Round 0 will run from Saturday, July 19th to Saturday, August 9th, 11:59pm US Eastern Time.
The character limit for this round is 4 full length Reddit comments, or 40k characters.
While it is fine to go a little bit over, anything that far surpasses this limit will be disqualified. This limit does not include intro posts, or analysis of the matchup.
3
u/CalicoLime Aug 07 '25
Having a rifle back in my hands after what seemed like forever just felt right. Albeit,the Empire’s bolt-action might as well have been a bow and arrow compared to what I’d been handed moments ago.
A sleek, silver affair with glowing red lights on the side to indicate overheating. It had almost no kickback when firing and slung rounds at an impressive rate.
If they did not ask for it back, I was not going to remind them.
Even without enhancement by the magical doping that nearly all Empire Aerial Mages used, my marksmanship was nothing to scoff at.
I picked off two of our uninvited guests with quick headshots, the rifle’s AP rounds having no problem punching through the invaders helmets and a thin layer of what I rightly assumed was some form of kinetic armor.
When I took cover to reload, I saw some of my would-be wards in action.
Denji’s transformation was abrupt and upsetting. A large, whirring blade spawned from his forehead and both arms, turning him into a monster truly worthy of a chainsaw. He tore through screaming soldiers like they were paper, sending hunks of meat flying in every direction in a gory display.
Trunks appeared from above, wielding his sword with all the finesse that Denji lacked. Clean cuts left soldiers confused if they’d even been hit, leaving them to find out when they tried to raise their weapons that they would need to be fitted for a pair of prosthetics.
Rounding out the group was Blaze. True to her moniker, blue flames jumped from her palms, manipulated by the movement of her arms to chase down fleeing attackers. It was almost beautiful if not for the screams and the smell.
Then there was me, a little girl with a rifle half her size.
In the past I had never been one for one-upsmanship. Being a hard, consistent worker was better than flash-in-the-pan successes but I also knew that one has to start somewhere. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down but the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Finding the middle ground between those two proverbs was the key to success.
With only a trio of remaining marauders left, I placed a hand to my chest.
“O Lord who art in Heaven, hear my words. Let your mighty hand be pressed down atop the heads of the nonbelievers as I smite them in your holy name.”
I pulled the trigger expecting a magical blast that would punch a hole through the lot of them, but only received a single, unremarkable shot that caught one in the chest.
Momentarily stunned, I neglected to take out the other two that were charging at me. Thin, orange blades extended from their Omni-Tools like bayonets and I was fit to be skewered.
Snapping out of my disbelief with only a second to spare, I brought my rifle up into the jaw of the attacker to my right. In spite of coming from such a small frame, the soldier was knocked back enough to bump into his companion, stopping the both of them for the moment I needed to level my rifle.
A sustained tug on the trigger left both of them at my feet.
Blaze signalled the all-clear after a short conversation through her communicator, waving for the team to huddle up.
“We’re going to have to set down on Eden Prime before we make it to Arcadia. The other boarders were stopped but their ship still did some damage to Purgatory’s engine.” She explained.
“Why did they send us all over here if there were two boarding parties?” Denji asked, obviously not content with the amount of blood covering his shirt.
“No need, Vergilius intercepted the other one.”
The others all nodded along as if to say “well, that explains it”.
When the all-clear was sounded and I’d returned to my chambers, the excitement of getting tossed into a gunfight did little to help me drift off to dreamland.
Being X had no doubt sent me here as another test of faith, but had he truly sent me with nothing but my wit (powerful as it is) and determination?
How had I not noticed? The Ellinium 95 was gone. I could no longer feel mana coursing through my veins. It has been replaced by something else.
A rhythmic thumping in the center of my chest.
“It’ll be a good experience for you as their manager…” was the only bit of advice Vergilius had offered before the bay doors snapped shut leaving me in charge of a group of rowdy so-and-sos on an alien planet.
A quick peek into the Omni-Tools of the jerks who tried to shanghai us turned up something interesting: a sinkhole had opened up beneath one of the deserted installations, swallowing half a building complex but revealing a lot more.
“While the ship is repaired, we’ve been tasked with inspecting whatever those C Corp jerks found. They’ve set up a dig site roughly five clicks south of here and the Company wants us to make sure they’re willing to share, one way or the other.”
C Corp, formerly known as Cerberus before it was acquired by Limbus Company, was a part of the human’s first movement and got up to all kinds of clandestine works. The Omni-Tool had explained that it was formally shut down when their crimes against other sentient races had been discovered, but rumors quickly spread that the higher ups were still in control even with the fresh coat of paint their rebranding had given them. The fact I’d just had to shoot a few of them was proof positive enough.
“We are expecting resistance so be ready. Let’s move out!”
The team responded with an affirmative shout (except for Sasori who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else) and we started moving.
Eden Prime looked a lot like Earth. There was green grass underfoot and large trees providing adequate amounts of shade. Sloped hills boxed in by rocky outcroppings led where the human settlements had been before they were wiped out. The sky was a mix of red and purples that resembled the peaceful hours of a late afternoon.
All in all, it was pretty boring for my first taste of “alien” life. I’m not saying I wanted flying cars, a blood red sky, or to be greeted by ambassadors with as many heads as I have toes but it would’ve been a more memorable experience.
Moving mostly in silence, save for some idle chit-chat between Denji and Trunks, we came to the site relatively quickly.
Just as the brief had described, we stood at the top of a slope looking down into the pit full of C Corp lackeys.
The center of attention was a large building that had toppled over due to disrepair and the sizable hole the impact of its falling had opened up. Looking down into it from atop the slope made my chest feel warm. It wasn’t fear and I wasn’t especially interested in whatever lie below, but something felt like it was pulling me towards the abyss.
Heavy machinery tossed pieces of rubble out of the way as foremen shouted directions to their operators. Guards were posted at sectioned intervals around the work site, all armed with the same assault rifle I had strapped to my back.
“We’ll sneak into the camp and attack once we have a better idea of how many -” my voice was drowned out by the thunderous scream of a chainsaw.
Denji was halfway down the slope by the time I managed to bark out any protest. He was too far gone and had made too much noise for a simple “oops, got ahead of myself” so I’d have to make the most of what I was given.
Making the best of a bad situation was the hallmark of a good boss so as frustrating as it was, this was an opportunity. With the camp’s full attention on the lunatic running straight at them, we would find an opening to slip into their midst and cause a ruckus.
“Trunks, follow him! You two are with me!”