"What is Fire?
Courageous and Strong, the fury of the sun."

"What is Air?
Adventurous and Agile, the chaos of the storm."

"What is Earth?
Wise and Enduring, the Immutability of the mountain."

"What is Water?
Intelligent and beautiful, the cold of the moon."

"What is Light?
Kind and selfless, the brilliance consumes all."

"What is Darkness?
Driven and protective, the hunger knows no limit."
~First verse of the hymn of the elements.

The Codex!

Welcome to RUNE! This roleplay focuses on the planet of RUNE, a magical land where both arcane magic and advanced technology reigns, Where adventure is the order of the day.

PC's will play characters hired to escort a merchant caravan to the desert city of Rosa, with some interesting stuff happening along the way.

A particularly important theme is elemental affinity, explained here:


Now, onto the rules:

Rules:
1. I am the law. Seriously, what I say goes.
2. Any Co-GMs I appoint are also the Law.
3. Be like the Fonz, be cool, be kind.
4. You MAY make shit up. Like races, powers, and whatnot. Just keep these things in mind; You may not add any elements, you must get my approval first, and you must not contradict anything. I'll help you tweak it in the event you run afoul of that last point, but will deny it outright if those first two points are broken.
5. Be creative! I wanna see some cool stuff, things a little more interesting than double-katana trenchcoat guy.
6. Lighten up! while this isn't Monty Python, there's a fair amount of silliness in this setting. That said,
7. Know when to be serious! If everyone's busy lamenting the death of a character's child, now is not the time to bust through the wall with shotgun paladin on a T-rex.
8. These rules are suspect to change anytime I feel like, if necessary.

And finally, the CS:



Now for rules on character creation.

1. If you have any tech, you can't have anything more than 1950's era stuff. Occasionally there are exceptions, just ask me first.
2. You may not be rich. Let me rephrase that; you may not have access to large amounts of money. Like if you are a noble and your father has revoked your access to the treasury or something. You guys are coming together to do this job for money, you wouldn't have much of a motivation if you were already loaded, right?
3. Keep in mind you guys are scrubs. you guys are basically Level one right now, but don't worry, you'll get better.

Aside from that, go nuts. Background info on the setting may be found in the Codex (link above) other than that, I'm looking forward to roleplaying with you guys!

Username: Rtron The Magnificent

Name: Dirae (Die-ray)

Race: Siren

Age: 23

Gender: Female

Homeland: UMBRA

Appearance:

Her eyes are odd. The pupils are a golden yellow, while the Sclera are pitch black, with white dots scattered around them, like stars in the night sky. She wears her lovely little mask(altered so that she can sing and be heard clearly, but her breath can't be seen) to hide the fact that whenever she breathes, gold and black gasses alternate in coloring her breath. Her hair color is purple. She's wearing a vest covered with pockets for tidbits and useful items she's found. All of her clothing has pockets sewn into it as well.

Size: 5ft 3in

Elemental Affinity: Dark

Bio: Dirae was born in UMBRA, under unusual circumstances. Her mother was a Siren with Dark affinity, visiting the lands of Light. She was just curious to see what other lands were like, compared to the darkly beautiful lands of UMBRA. She was in a bar when she met the God of Light, Adon. Or at least, the form he chose to take that day. Dirae's questioning of her mother gave her vague details at best, and dear old dad certainly wasn't around to tell her what happened, so she had to accept her mother's short and to the point explanation. Several ounces of potent liquour had been consumed by the both of them, they talked and liked each other like they assuredly wouldn't have if they had both been sober, one thing led to another, and when she woke up the next morning, a God was fading away in the light, leaving the words 'this never happened'. And so she behaved like in never happened, continuing to wander RUNE. That is, until it became clear she was pregnant.

Luckily for Dirae, and her mother, she had been visiting home when it became apparent. So there was no long traveling ot get home before the baby was delivered. Unfortunately, the Goddes of Dark, Auna, noticed that one of her followers had been impregnated by the God of Light. His essence was in her child. She took slight offense to this, and decided to counteract his involvement, but putting her some of her own essence into the child. The result?

Pain. Excruciating, agonizing, pain whenever the two godly essences inside of Dirae decide they can't get along and play nice. It's happened less and less as she's grown, but its still happens far to often for Dirae's taste. Like whenever she does something that one or the other thinks is overly selfish or selfless, or whenever she tries to stay out of stranger's problems or gets involved in their problems. Or a host of other personality conflicts.

Her father's followers mostly view her as something to be protected and preserved. Which means, they want to lock her up and never let her see the light of day in the name of protection. Those few that don't want to protect her want to kill her, viewing the dark 'taint' of Auna as something that has corrupted her and to free her from the 'pain' of having Auna's touch, they must kill her. Auna's followers at least are constant. They want her dead. The mass public however, couldn't care less about her. But, when they inevitably notice her breath, word would eventually reach her father's worshippers, or Auna's worshippers, and she'd have to leave before she was either imprisoned or killed. Or both.

At the age of fifteen, she left home to explore UMBRA and the world. For the most part, it's been relatively prejudicial, maniacal, religous, murderous, zealot free. Except for when her mask comes off and she breathes out and they ask questions she has long since stopped giving believable lies for. Adventure awaits! And with adventure, perhaps anonymity.

Personality: Dirae prefers her machine and magical creations to people. They're less likely to try and kill you for something you couldn't help being, or try and lock you up for your 'safety' because of your divine blood, or expect you to do divine acts by calling upon your godly parent. Her personality can...differ. Some days(or even hours) she might be as Selfish and Driven as her Dark affintiy demands. Others, she'll go with what the Light essence in her says, and be selfless and humble. There is one constant, however. She's protective. If you've earned her trust and friendship(and sometimes if you haven't), the two essences in her will actually be nice and work together to help her protect you from any harm. She also has split personality to the extreme. Someitmes, when the pain of two essences battling insid of her becomes to much, her normal mind will recede from the rest of her, to recuperate and watch. Whichever Essence is winning will take over for a time, and she will act exactly according to that essence's desires.

Skills: Singing, especially without using her magic. Since her magic depends on her voice, she really is a wonderful singer. If you can notice that when she's trying to kill you, anyways. Creation, both magical and technological. Give her the proper materials, and she can make something useful with her hands, or at least repair and/or improve an item. Magical wise, she's adept at using her voice to create things(illusions, elemental attacks, golems, etc.) for both defense and offensive purposes.

Equipment: A revolver, and a toolbelt(filled with tools, naturally).

Other: Has she mentioned the voices in her head? The two essences inside of her have developed personalities and voices of their own. They argue almost constantly, but she's managed to develop the skill of ignoring them to such a fine degree that she only notices an annoying buzz in the back of her mind.

She also has a, tiny, pet mechanical dragon. It's technically magical, but she created it with technology and gave it gimmicks and things to help her on repairs and building. The magic is only a source of power, to give it personality and life. It's roughly the size of a billards ball(when it's curled up into a ball in the crook of Dirae's shoulder), and is 6 inches from nose to tail tip.

She returns!

Don't know I'm in. Not sure I'm up for it.

Rtron said
Name: Dirae (Die-ray)

Accepted, deposit her in the codex at your leisure.

tobiax said
Don't know I'm in. Not sure I'm up for it.

Fair enough, mate. There'll always be a spot open if you change your mind.

Now I just gotta go think up a character...

Freeshooter92 said

Missed ya Free.
You and Lucius.

We're allowed to introduce our own NPCs, if we run it by you Free, right?

Hmph. Kind of what to bring in a new kind of character.... Gunna sit on this one for a while.

Rtron said
We're allowed to introduce our own NPCs, if we run it by you Free, right?

You can do pretty much anything so long as you run it by me first. Just let me whip up an NPC sheet.

Alright dude, just head to the Codex for further instruction.

Ahh what the hell! A CS is on its way! (good timing, since I just got back from vacation).

I'm still finishing up some bits, like her personality and skills, but for the most part its done:



Username:
Kilo6
Name:
Alice Bradly
Race:
Human Mutant (history explains this)
Age:
18
Gender:
Female
Homeland:
Nova
Appearance:
Has messy grayish blonde hair and icy blue eyes along with a scar that runs from the left shoulder to bottom right of her back. She also has this tattoo on her left shoulder.
Size:
Stands at around 5'8
Elemental Affinity:
Air
Bio:
Alice has had an interesting, if anything sad life up to this point. Her father was a Nova man who brought his Aqua wife back to his beloved homeland. At first, the community shunned the couple, putting very little trust from such a foreign outsider. But as they went about their lives, they slowly warmed up to the Aqua woman. Her father was a Mage, her mother, a full time cook but part time inventor. Her mother always seemed to be fascinated in machines and always seem to hunger for more knowledge about them. On the second day of a new year, they had their first and only child, Alice. When Alice was born, she was a very weak child, barley surviving infancy and being a shaky, sickly tottler. Despite her physical weakness, she was obviously her mothers child as she seem to stare in awe as she watched her mother tinker with machines and build new ones. The snowy village they lived in was not surprised at all that the mixed blood girl that was born was struggling to survive. Often times, behind closed doors, people would talk of her almost as an abomination, something to take pitty on for its now polluted blood line. When Alice turned ten, her condition worsened. She was now always sick with something and constantly on the verge of death. Her father, at that moment, pushed aside any thoughts of alienating himself from his daughter and devoted all his magical knowledge and know how to finding some sort of cure for his sick daughter. When Alice was fifteen, she was dieing, so her father decided to use an untested form of soul binding to save her life.

The soul binding worked as he was successfully able to bind Alice's soul with an animal's soul, specifically a bobcat, allowing her spirit to be much stronger than before and thus making the body very healthy and resilient. The downside was because of the direct bonding of the two souls into one instead of simply creating a link like other soul bonds, Alice inherited some of the physical features of the bobcat. Her senses suddenly became much more sensitive as her teeth grew sharper and ears and tail sprouted from her body. For a week she endured these painful alterations to her body and her brain adapting to all the new sensory information she was receiving. Her parents were to happy to care about their daughter's new appearance and simply cried with joy that their only daughter was going to be alright. The village, however, not so much.

They saw this as a magical abomination. It was already bad that she was a girl of mixed bloods, but now she had features of that of a demon? They soon gave her parents an ultimatum, banish the daughter themselves or face severe consequences. Her parents refused, and soon died in a mysterious fire that burned down their home. Alice, having survived, fled. Leaving the village and stowing away on a ship to Terra, never wanting to set foot on Nova again. That was two years ago. She found that she could both handle magic very well and work on machines as well. When she arrived in Terra, she became an apprentice to a craftsman/machinist and began to work under him. She discovered that her new physical body was incredibly strong, lifting heavy machinery like they were nothing. She soon became quite the word around town as a strange looking girl who could lift something twice her size working as an apprentice for an old craftsman. After working for two years of working for him, she got restless. Talking to many adventures and travelers that would come buy to have their equipment repaired.

Thus, after much saving, she set off to travel with her own custom built equipment. Her new, true hometown behind, she has been simply wandering and doing small jobs for the bast year. Now wandering into "Fool's redoubt", curious of the location.

Personality:
Despite her isolation, Alice developed a friendly personality through her work with the wise old craftsman. She's naturally curious and skeptical of the world around her and is always willing to learn more. While generally very tolerant and friendly, she does have a hardwired weariness of people from Nova. Typically she would rather leave the room than have a confrontation with someone from Nova. Other than that, she's a relatively brave, friendly, and curious.

Skills:
Incredible strength: being able to lift heavy equipment and weapons, hence her custom rifle cannon as her main weapon.
Good With Machines: She has a natural knack for machines, often being able to learn quickly about new items.
Curious: While not incredibly knowledgeable, she has the ability to comprehend and learn new, even more complex ideals and theories.

Equipment:
-A 20mm Semi Automatic cannon-
-"Strikers": Of her own invention, these leg mounted machines allow her to move across rough terrain at speeds up to 30mph, making her very quick and nimble.-
-.45 pistol-
-Small tool kit-

Kilo6 said
Name: Alice Bradly

Alrighty, let's get down to business.

1. Rosa is the destination this time, we'll be starting at a locale known as Fool's redoubt, occasionally known as 'Fort dumbass.' I didn't mae that bit clear I guess, sorry about that.

2. I am hesitant to give someone a 75mm cannon. Can we tone it down a bit? How can she fire it accurately? That blast shield would make aiming down the sights impossible, and unless she weighs several tons the recoil is going to send her flying every time (no amount of strength in the world could fix this). So the only time she would actually be able to fire it would be when it's mounted.

3. In NOVA, a more common belief would be that the father should be executed for his crimes against reality, but the daughter would be seen as an unfortunate victim rather than a monster. However, every settlement is different.

4. Her 'condition' would make her soul unstable and vulnerable to magic of all varieties, are you okay with that? Don't say I didn't warn you.

Freeshooter92 said
1. Rosa is the destination this time, we'll be starting at a locale known as Fool's redoubt, occasionally known as 'Fort dumbass.' I didn't mae that bit clear I guess, sorry about that.

No worries, I'll edit that then.

Freeshooter92 said
.2. I am hesitant to give someone a 75mm cannon. Can we tone it down a bit? How can she fire it accurately? That blast shield would make aiming down the sights impossible, and unless she weighs several tons the recoil is going to send her flying every time (no amount of strength in the world could fix this). So the only time she would actually be able to fire it would be when it's mounted.

Oh, sorry, I thought I already edited that. I was gonna intend it to be 20mm cannon, which she will be able to fire quite accurately since it acts more like a semi auto rifle than a machine gun. That "blastshield" was just part of the image. Just imagine the same gun without the blastshield.

Freeshooter92 said
3. In NOVA, a more common belief would be that the father should be executed for his crimes against reality, but the daughter would be seen as an unfortunate victim rather than a monster. However, every settlement is different.

I was going for a more radical settlement, so not only is the father executed via "vigilanty justice" but she is considered an abomination more than a victim. Still working out the details to her past but thanks for the clarification. I'll keep it in mind.

Freeshooter92 said
4. Her 'condition' would make her soul unstable and vulnerable to magic of all varieties, are you okay with that? Don't say I didn't warn you.

How so? Just curios. I do actually like the idea that she will be particularly/ironically very vulnerable to magic, but I just want to know specifically why.

1-3: Alrighty.

4. Essentially, another creature was more or less directly grafted onto her soul, resulting in impurities and instability. This doesn't matter under normal circumstances, but magical energy will cause further instability, thereby dealing a greater amount of damage. While the effects of the base spell would be magnified, certain magic may cause additional effects.

For example, a fireball wouldn't actually be hotter or burn more, but getting hit by that fireball might cause involuntary muscle spasms, seizures, temporary blindness, etc. Only magic will actually affect her so, so a flamethrower won't do that.

Alright, I think that's a good trade. She posses incredible strength and speed for her size yet is very vulnerable to magical attacks. Neat! Can't wait to get started.

Username: Lucius Cypher
Name: Karnage Urabrask Vorinclex
Race: Formerly a Demon Orc (Time will tell if he will ever obtain his original body back), currently some sort of Tree-Creature.
Age: 455 (Only the last fifty or so year was spent as a tree person)
Gender: Male
Homeland: Land of Tiien
Appearance:

Size: Stands at about seven feet and is quite huge. Has trouble fitting into most places.
Elemental Affinity: Earth elemental, though sometimes his personality doesn't really match and makes him seem more Fiery.
Bio: Karnage is not from this world. He has no home here, no name for himself which others would know him for, and is something of a paradox. How he came to be here first started when he went into a foray into a hellish realm that, in his world, is called The Inferno. Being a regular at traversing the plane of demons and sin, he had not expected to run across a strange portal, seemingly operating under it's own power. As a professor of his brand of magic, which involved demons and the Inferno, Karnage was all too willing to experiment on the portal. But his curiosity would be his undoing; interacting with power he had little knowledge of, he was forced into the Portal and thrown across the universes and put into worlds vastly different from his own. But it was not all too bad. Many of the worlds he traveled was, at the very least, functional for him. Each world had it's own form of magic that made his own largely ineffective, but it was a learning experience.

Despite still be unsure of what had happened, Karnage took advantage of the unknown and began to chronicle the events he went through. He discovered many new worlds and cultures, and used his relative immortality (Or agelessness as it would be) to learn as much as he can in these worlds, writing down his knowledge in journals for future references. He has visited worlds were magic has declined but technology reigns, worlds were mortals traverse the skies in boats, places were magic is innate and has ascended mortal kind to to the level of Deities, and to a place that he has hypothesis was "Pre-Tiien", also known as Earth. He also has put more research into the portals which he traverses these worlds through, which he dub's "Rifts". By going to places with chaotic (Often demonic) influences, he can crossover into other continuities and universes, or perhaps even into the past or future of his current world or another.

His current foray has brought him to the land of RUNE, though there seems to be a mishap that he had never experienced before. After leaving a world ruled by parasitic lifeforms who invade the bodies of their hosts and mutant them, Karnage chose to flee before he too joined their masses. But when he went through the Rift, he found himself inside a tree. And not any tree; some sort of holy tree which not only suppressed his demon magic (If this world was capable with his brand of magic) but was also incredibly sturdy, and no amount of thrashing could free him. He shouted for help, but no one came. For years he was trapped in that tree, stewing in his own madness. Madness that gave hims strength. He began to leak his mind and spirit to the tree, to take control of it as an extension of himself. It was not a quick process however; it took him thirty years before he could fully assimilate with the tree. But when he did, he began the creature you see now; the titanic being of nature, controlled by an aberration of time and space. And now he seeks answers to how he came to be, and how to return him back to his true form.
Personality: Karnage is a surly and generally unpleasant person. As a orc/demon double whammy, he was very cruel and evil, thinking nothing of the ramification of doing what he wants. But fortunately for others, what he wants is usually pretty harmless; mostly to be left alone to pursue his interests, which are mostly academical. A pursuer of knowledge, a full-time student of life, and an occasional teacher of slaughter and rape, Karnage is also a bit scholarly and interested in learning more about the world around him, or putting his knowledge into use and creating something for himself. And while he has a rather brutal disposition towards people in general, he is capable of compassion and kindness when it suits him. Often is rather charitable and generous, though he'd hide it with lies or plays down their worth in order to maintain a sense of superiority while still assisting those who are in need of his help. Total tsundere.
Skills: Thanks to spending much of his immortal life educating himself, Karnage has many skills in many professions. Unfortunately due to his immortal life but not an immortal brain capacity, he also has forgotten a lot of what he can do. Luckily he has journals which he can use to help jog his memory of the many things he's done in the past. Not that many of those skills are particularly helpful or even possible, given that he is largely unfamiliar with how he can use his current body.

In this current body however, he with very, very strong. He has incredibly high natural armor and the strength to crush buildings, and that's just with his not-a-giant-club right arm. With his club arm he could count as some sort of siege weapon with the force he can put into it. Additionally, his body seems to be capable of some sort of regeneration magic, though he's not sure if this is due to being a tree or the magic charms and possible holy connection the tree posses. He is capable of "Communicating" with plant life and fungi, which he finds immensely useful as they tend to hear everything and are quite willing to share their knowledge with him. He seems to be capable of some sort of magic which reminds him of Herbamancy of his world, though he loath to use the magic due to it serving as a reminder of a person he has a rather disdainful relationship with.
Equipment: Stored inside his torso is Karnage's travel bag, which contains his journals and trinkets from his past. It also contains a Double Orc Axe, the weapon which he has used for most of his adventures, as well as a few magical potions of various effects. However Karnage is unaware that his torso contains these things. He does know that his stump arm grows magical mushrooms that can be used to increase the metabolism of those who eats it to astronomical levels depending on the amount eaten. While this can be detrimental to a person's health, if they have a steady supply of food, they can utilizing this metabolism by constantly eating said food and use it to regenerate from injuries. I.e. Put some of this stuff on your food and you can restore your HP by eating.
Other: It has been observed that, while it is fully possible for Karange to die in any world he arrives in, there may be other Karnages traversing the universe like him. He has met a few and assimilated their knowledge and dominance, though he still doesn't know the full ramifications of his actions, if any.

I enjoy that 2/3 of that name is comprised of New Phyrexia praetors.

I know, he's an old character. I played a Red/Green deck back when I still played Magic.