It began almost 100 years ago, when the City first ever appeared on the planet, what looked like a single block of it in the middle of a cornfield in central Nebraska, the owners of said cornfield brutally butchered by beings that, according to a number of less-than-reputable witnesses, were made of shadow. Over time, the City grew, other instances of it appearing all over the world, doorways that were not there before leading into the City. No matter how much the planet and the humans that weren't already taken tried to react, the City grew, and people were brought in either by trickery or by force. 100 years later, if there is anything left of the old planet Earth, the survivors in the City don't know about it. In an unnatural and sentient world that is filled to the brim with the unnatural, surreal, and monstrous, where the very City itself can change its layout, its geometries, and even the laws of physics and reality itself within its seemingly endless borders, the people living in it have had a toll taken on their already fragile sanity.
Across the City there are safe zones, places where all but the most powerful and sentient of creatures may willingly enter, where the City itself cannot even alter it. These safe areas, known under the umbrella term Dead Zones, became the grounds for all larger human settlements, known as Sectors, eking out a living through the supplies and food the City itself leaves for them, like treats for pets inside a cage. Other humans try working in nomadic groups, or even wandering the endless City streets alone, but most of them are set upon by the Shadow Graphers and other dark beasts that reside within the City, or are forever lost until they waste away and are absorbed into eternity. But even for those who have hollowed out a living, life is a bleak, continuous reminder that there is no hope to escape, and no hope to die having lived a truly worthwhile life. While many of the Sectors have fair systems in place and cling to humanity, many others have gone the path of slavery, masochism, destruction, and even worship of the City and the more godlike beings within its walls.

Sector Nine is known as one of the more successful Sectors in the City. A harboring place for a lot of former mercenaries, hunters, and raiders who wanted a better, more peaceful life, the elders of the Sector had passed down to their offspring and younger members of the Sector the art of stalking the City, hunting and evading the beasts within, and finding the Caches left by the City in its most dangerous places, and with it they amassed stockpile after stockpile. However, this has caught the eye of Sector Three. Sector Three is a society of people who have given up on retaining what remains of human decency, and opt instead for pragmatic action for what they perceive as the betterment of their society, using any barbaric means necessary, including experiments on humans using technology found within the City and slavery. Some of the members on Sector Nine's council used to be something akin to war heroes of Sector Three before voicing their disapproval and abandoning the Sector when it got too inhumane. This Sector claims that their former heroes are their property, and therefore their disciples, their stockpiles, and even their entire Sector is, by proxy, forfeit. While neither side is truly good or bad- many of Sector Three's citizens secretly defy their Sector's leadership and want peaceful trade between the two as gentle, sovereign Sectors, and some members in the Sector Nine populace simply want the Sector wiped out, alongside any others that act as anything short of allies to Sector Nine. More, still, simply want to study the City and learn more about the creatures and the location itself, which they see as their true enemy. Nevertheless, both sides' animosities towards each other are causing crippling setbacks in the Sectors. It has become harder to scavenge and hunt for either side, and it seems relations even with other Sectors have been strained or cut off entirely until the matter is settled. Nobody's sure how it's going to happen, but the thought is lingering in everyone's mind: there will be war.

The setting of Beyond the City Walls is in the aforementioned City. Doubling as a location and a sentient eldritch abomination in and of itself, it is rumored to be many things by many people, up to and including a living bubble in space, God itself, and a creature from another dimension, and nobody can prove or disprove any of these notions. As stated, the City has free autonomous will to change its layout, shape, geometries, and laws of physics and reality at will, oftentimes causing strange and unnatural formations in the City. It is also responsible for the production of new, unnatural creatures, the care of many other creatures residing but not directly made by it, such as the Constants and their Servants, and the absorption of any creature that dies within its active zones and any objects the person had on them.

The zones that are inactive and unable to produce the City's creatures or be changed in any way by the City itself are known as Dead Zones, and these spots act as the constrictive but safe locations for the surviving remnants of humanity, known as Sectors. Each Sector operates in its own unique way. Some make trade off of fine entertainments, others enslave and experiment, others still act in total anarchy, ruthlessly study the City, and many even worship the City and the Constants within it. However, the majority are sane representative governments led by a council that make their money off of scavenging and hunting beasts.

As of this point in the RP, the current known Sectors in the city are:

Sector Three - A Sector that traded in many of its peoples' civil liberties and human rights in return for supposed "absolute protection" from the City. While many members of the City, even within its bourgeoisie disagree, the direct leadership claims that the original members of Sector Three and their descendants are the "pure" humans, to whom the City cannot and will never touch, and that the only way of "purifying" people from outside those families comes from shedding them of their humanity and exploiting them by experimenting on them with artifacts or other things gathered from inside the City. Most of the descendants of the families and basically all the non-"pure" members of the Sector disagree, and want to change the Sector's methods and turn it into a gentle scavenging location. However, the same can't be said of all.
Sector Nine - A Sector whose council is comprised of some of the finest minds and retired mercenaries in the City, people who have tried to get out of the war, death, and retrieving businesses, and lived to tell the tale. While Sector Nine is a major superpower, most of the true value that the Sector receives does not come from the commodities and essentials that it gathers from Caches all over the City, but through the dozens of able-bodied young citizens acting as Hunters and Retrievers for the Sector, and the smooth-talking merchants who make the inter-Sector magic happen. A number of the more extreme citizens call for radicalization and Sector Nine supremacy, but for the most part the face of the Sector is the more benevolent face.
More Sectors will be added as the story continues...

The City itself, in its active zones, have a number of horrifying creatures that it both spawns and lets live within its boundaries, almost all of whom either work in the interest of the City or are instantly hostile towards people. These include, but are by far not limited to:
Shadow Graphers - These strange creatures look at first like living shadows with white pinhole eyes and thin, grinning mouths. However, looks can be deceiving, because these forms are just the base state of the individual creatures, as they can attack by grouping together and becoming nightmarish beasts of varying shapes and sizes. Of all the creatures in the City, these are one of four that can be talked to, but only as messengers sent by the City or by a Constant. These Shadow Graphers can be dissipated and killed by any gun or ranged weapon, but it normally takes excessive amounts of bullets. Afflicted and fire or light-based weaponry can more easily and efficiently take down these creatures.
The Flock - Rumored to be creatures of the same ilk as the Shadow Graphers due to their shadowy appearance, these creatures take the form of birds, usually dozens to hundreds at a time, almost blackening the sky above them. Whereas Shadow Graphers amass to form creatures, The Flock can amass to form strong winds, lightning strikes, full on tornadoes and a variety of other catastrophic skyborn threats. They can also swoop down and attack individually, usually going for soft, necessary spots like the eyes. While light and fire based weaponry still do wonders against The Flock if it's in range, Afflicted are vulnerable to attacks to the eyes and usually they're too far away- or you're too busy being blinded- for you to use your gun. They're also just a tad bit invulnerable in their weather state, but usually it is a state they can only hold for at most a few minutes.
The Harmony - If you're a Retriever out in the City and you misheard something one of your partners say, chances are you're dealing with this slimy enemy. This creature rarely, in fact almost never attacks directly, and works by altering peoples' perceptions of reality itself, on top of an already endlessly shifting cityscape. It mostly alters your auditory senses but large clumps of it can change the way you see things as well. If The Harmony latches onto you or gets in your bloodstream, nothing save a nice long talk with a Constant can change the tides.
Tower Spawn - Tower Spawn are fickle creatures constructed by the City. Usually a conglomeration of flesh, rock, other composite materials and intricate, almost impossible clockwork machinery, these beings are usually given some level of sentience and a directive. A cross between a mannequin, a golem, and a robot, these creatures operate and are given abilities or functions that suit their purposes, whatever these purposes are. Pieces of Tower Spawn are mostly what Sector Three tries experimenting on people with.
Cacklers - Mostly these are nighttime creatures, so they rarely make an appearance in the day except in dark interiors or in underground systems. They look like normal parts of the City, street lights, cones, empty newspaper vendors, a fire hydrant, anything. They can either communicate (especially in the case of a street light with its three lights), but most of the ones that will attack you will simply cackle. They'll cackle and you won't know where it's coming from until it reverts to its original form, which nobody has ever really lived to see. If they survived the Cacklers at all, they ran like hell until they reached a Dead Zone.
The Afflicted - While most Afflicted retain ties to their group or Sector unless ousted, exiled, or were too far gone to retain humanity, Afflicted are merely human beings whose ties to the City and Constants have caused them to undergo physiological, psychological and a variety of other changes to the point that their humanity can either be in appearance only or lacking at all. When it comes to physical or powerful advantages, Afflicted honestly run the gamut and being Afflicted by the City is like playing power roulette, where the odds are you are at a combat advantage, but your status as a nonhuman gives you a lot of prejudice and outright contempt if you're not in a super progressive Sector. A separate post describing various Afflicted that show up will be created and updated when Afflicted begin showing up or characters begin undergoing the Affliction process.
The Constants - These are the biggest, baddest, and most dangerous creatures in the City other than, well, the City itself. Very few of these beings have ever been seen, none have been recorded except by word of mouth, but their influence is everywhere. Many Sectors fall due to their Servants or influences, many Sectors outright worship them, and a number of Constants seem to be brought up in the deepening mystery of the City. For the most part, The Constants are godlike in nature, almost impossible to kill but not completely impossible, with legions of Servants at their beck and call. They reside in Domains in the center of the City, Domains being the only parts of the City that don't look like a city, and rarely leave these nightmarish sections. They are more than sentient and more than capable of human speech, but making deals with one or trying to side with one is very dangerous and very likely to end in nasty consequences. Each Constant is unique and has their own set of skills, Servants, and even are said to represent humanity in its whole essence and even responsible for the City's consumption of the Earth. A separate post describing various Constants that show up will be created and updated if and when Constants are mentioned or arrive.
Many, many, many other creatures, too many to fully list (it truly depends on what the City can think up to throw at you), but the more recurring creatures will be listed here as it updates.

Shadow Graphers (White-Eyed Variant) - The most recurring and easily spotted of the City's creatures. These act as the City's messengers, writing the messages in shadows on walls or in the air. Mostly, however, they're a pack creature, amassing in hundreds of themselves, sometimes fusing together to create hellish monstrosities at a moment's whim. Most Shadow Graphers are white-eyed Shadow Graphers, and aside from being able to fuse into something that looks large and menacing they really are close to the bottom rung of the ladder as far as threat scales go.
Appearance - They are created of a semi-translucent, black shadowy substance that the City creates from the shadows. They take a vaguely humanoid form, with an earless silhouetted gob for a head and long, slender proportions, akin to shadows cast against walls from an evening sun. Fingers long and reaching like claws, they can do some heinous things on their own to the unprepared, but with the prepared their flesh is something akin to tissue paper, or warm butter.
Abilities - They can mold themselves into shapes that appear large or intimidating and can move fluidly in the shapes they mold themselves into, acting and fighting well for the physiology they adapt to. They can be fairly fast and any direct contact with them allows them to slice where their shadowy flesh meets your skin on contact.
Weaknesses - Shadow Graphers have tissue density of, well, tissue paper, or sometimes a really strong one will have the density of lukewarm butter. They are among the single easiest creatures to kill and even though the shadows can reform, the things they create are diminished in size and power on an exponential level each time they're severely wounded.

The Flock
Description - The City's resident eyes in the skies, The Flock are essentially the next step up from Shadow Graphers. They are aerial embodiments of nature and darkness, in a manner similar to the Shadow Graphers with a few differences, the first and foremost being the inclusion of wings.
Abilities - The Flock can take to the skies and has incredible agility in the air with their shadowy wings. A group of Flock birds can fuse together like Shadow Graphers, but form instead into dangerous weather phenomena, like hail, lightning, and twisters. They can also merge with and enter a human being, using it as a living Nest that's symbiotically linked, but cases of this are almost unheard of.
Weaknesses - The Flock's tissue is actually weaker than a Shadow Grapher's, and a single bullet or arrow can burst a Flock bird. They're especially vulnerable to fire or exterior electric attacks. Though most importantly- once they transform into the weather phenomena and it dissipates, they're gone. The birds used in that transformation are dead.

In Beyond the City Walls's first chapter, you decide which faction your character(s) will reside in, Sector Three, Sector Nine, or City Wandering. All of the factions have similar goals- Sector Three and Nine both wish to uncover Caches the City hides, study artifacts or creatures from the City, and overall ensure that they win the (potentially) upcoming war with each other, while keeping themselves up. You can be whoever- a member of the Councils, a Retriever (someone who goes out fully equipped to find Caches and loot them), a Hunter (the same, but for the hunting of criminals, spies, and most importantly City-created creatures), a merchant, shopkeeper, repairman, soldier, or even just a plain citizen hoping to make it big and training up. With City Wandering, usually this is more disposed to families or small groups of merchants and repairmen or hired mercenaries than large colonies of people, and their stance on the Sector War is neutral, unless, well, you make it not neutral.

Aside from new plot points being thrown in at certain times, or potential plot points in any case, the story outside the general backstory revolves completely around your actions and interactions (being, well, an RP) and any plot points you come up with or want to hatch is up to you. Mostly the GM is just a silent watcher in all this. You want to find a Cache hidden in the City's sewers? Go for it, just expect the City to be a bit difficult. You want to make a living as a successful merchant? Go right on ahead. You want to be a spy committing some inter-Sector espionage? All the more power to you. You want to conspire against your own Sector? Well, you're setting yourself up for an exile-based ending, but go do your thing, the world is your oyster. You can play anyone from hardened, guns-a-blazing Retriever, to a Hunter who ends up being afflicted and becoming one of the things he or she hunts (you're going to have to PM me about becoming Afflicted, though, or siding with Constants- both plot points aren't fully integrated and it's a slippery slope towards OP-ism when dealing with such beings), to just a guy making a living repairing equipment or studying City creatures or researching. Or many of them at the same time.

Every character starts off with 500 Cells, the form of currency agreed upon by all Sectors and nomads.

All three current factions have the capacity to be fairly well-armed and well-equipped, this being a City that provides a number of items to its trapped inhabitants. All three also have their own respective strengths, weaknesses, and preferences. The type of gear includes:
Weapons
Supplied Ranged Weapons - Supplied ranged weapons include small pistols (anything from a Colt 49 to a Le Mat), short-ranged rifles, and shotguns. These weapons can be on your character immediately at the start of the game and you can list this on your character's character sheet.
Scavenged Ranged Weapons - Scavenged ranged weapons include long-ranged rifles (including sniper rifles), submachine guns, automatic weapons, and specialized weapons, like rocket-propelled grenade launchers and napalm throwers. These weapons cannot be on your character immediately at the start of the game, and depending on their firepower it might be very, very rare to find these within any Cache and any owned by the Sector are locked away somewhere, but merchants can come by trading these weapons if you have the coin.
Melee Weapons - Melee weapons include blunt instruments, such as baseball bats and lead pipes, small blades, such as knives and ice picks, large blades, such as (rare) swords and machetes, and chainsaws (however, chainsaws require a working mechanism and gasoline, and both of which are fairly rare commodities). You can have up to one large blunt instrument and two small blades as part of your equipment, or four small blades and no blunt instrument, but large blades and chainsaws and any other medieval-style weapons you can think of you cannot have at the start, and have to be scavenged in Caches or traded with merchants.
Explosive Armaments - While Molotov Cocktails and Kukris can be fashioned if you scavenge the right parts, proper grenades or explosives are almost impossible to find, and cost a small fortune in Cells or require being found in extremely dangerous Caches. However, it's not impossible to find these in the City. You can have up to one handfashioned one at the start of your character.
Clothing and Body Armor
Clothing - Your character can have any style of clothing, between jeans and a t-shirt to a hoodie and slacks to a full-on armorless camo vest to formerly expensive formal wear, and have this as equipment at the start of your character.
Body Armor - Body armor consists of protective gear, stab plates, bullet resistant vests, full body armor, and helmets. You cannot have anything above stab plates as equipment in the beginning of your character, the rest can be traded or scavenged fairly quickly, however.
Other Equipment - Your character can have other equipment on-hand at any time, including night vision goggles, binoculars, walkie talkies (if they even somehow work), maps, compasses (not set to point towards a Sector- you'd likely have to pay to have that done), or anything else of value. Your character can have any of these but in exchange would have to start with 300 Cells instead of 500.
NOTE: In addition, due to Sector Three and others' experiments on humans using Tower Spawn parts and other City artifacts, both your character or your characters' weapons and armor can be infused with some strange properties and some (usually unsuccessful) procedures have given some people working Tower Spawn limbs which are durable and a bit stronger than a person's, at least enough to break a wall and, as it is an inorganic hand, not feel anything. However, you'll have to PM the GM about giving your character these enhancements beforehand, or plan it out and accept the opportunity as it comes along.

Your character can pretty much be anything you want your character to be, and you can even double up on some certain roles that don't clash with each other. The many jobs can alter your play style or you can have a couple characters that hit each mark. The roles can be divided into three categories:
Combat-Oriented- These can include Retrievers (sent to loot Caches), Hunters (sent to hunt bounties or creatures), Soldiers, Mercenaries, and Civil Security / Sector Troopers. Anyone intent on starting trouble or searching the City itself better expect to have a little bit of combat.
Repair and Research Oriented - These can include Scientists, Repairpeople, Researchers, Medics, Nurses, or Record Keepers (which you can double with combat or political/social.)
Political or Social Oriented - These can include Council Members, Merchants, Spies, Messengers, Entertainers, Con Artists and any other job you can think of that doesn't necessarily Combat or Repair/Research based. You can "retire" from Combat and be one but you can't double up without leaving the Political/Social sphere to rejoin Combat if that's what you want to do, but you can double up doing Repair/Resarch. The sole exception are spies, who can still retain combat if they're infiltrating as a member of another Sector's combat-oriented jobs.

Now the job you give your character isn't the job you're set with. It's gonna be a difficult journey if you try the route of job changing but this isn't a mandatory character assignment. This is the college majors of the job system. You can even switch factions, but you're going to have distrust on one side and you're gonna be hunted by the other most likely unless you started out full City Wanderer.

Your skills reflect your character's abilities and actions and while you can technically build up skills better by trying to do them over a period of time, chances are a person who's good at seduction and merchanting won't one-shot an enemy sniper at 500 paces. Now I won't provide a set list, and you can technically be as specific as you want, but that means "Fluffy Wombler Kicking" and "Ability to Jump Back or to the Side From Anything" will be your overly specific... actually that latter one is probably a tad overpowered. You can make it jumping, small arms, speechcraft, entertaining, repair, mercantile, City navigation, politics, the world is, again, your oyster here. I'm going to say no more than about seven things, just because having 20 super skills is a tad excessive, overpowering, etc. And you can be powerful, just not shoot and kill twenty enemies while simultaneously playing the bugle powerful. Likely, if you get contacted by the GM or a co-GM, your job position being overfilled in your faction or having a few eyebrow-raising skills is the reason.

Name- The character's name. This can be their full name, the name they go by, or in conjunction with some title they might have.
Age- The character's age. Pretty much a given.
Gender- The character's gender, if they have one.
Faction- Currently between Sector Nine, Sector Three, and City, though others may show up.
Job- The job (or jobs) that your character has in his or her faction. (Note: Some jobs may be limited in number of openings, in which case the GM will PM you with alternatives that still fit the game-play style you want.)
Appearance- The character's appearance. Be as verbose as you want, honestly, the more you want to describe your character, the more power to you. Alternately, you can put up a picture.
Starting Equipment- This is the equipment you want your character to start off with. Basic guns (starting from pistols to shotguns only in the beginning- if you want heavy duty firepower you fight your way to a Cache or trade for one) or melee weapons (up to short blades), clothing, any light body armor you might have (up to stab plates), and other basic pieces of equipment like night vision goggles, radios, or even personal effects your character takes with them.
Personality- The character's ideals about others, the City, philosophical things, likes, dislikes, habits, pet peeves, you name it. Whatever you come up with for your character so long as you show and tell.
Skills- Now everyone's got skills. Everyone and their grandma, so "Nothing special" won't work here. Mercantile, speech, good with firearms, crack sniper, great at traversing around the City, can throw a metal pipe through someone's chest, can punt a fluffy wombler two miles in any direction, whatever skills your character has just list them here. If it's something you think would not be a normal occurrence for a character in your faction, such as Affliction abilities or otherwise supernatural powers, you're gonna have to message me or someone about that. (May have up to seven, not counting Affliction abilities which may come later or other things which your character learns/adapts/takes on.)
Requests- These requests can be anything that you want someone to message you about first or things that you don't need formal messaging for. If you don't want to be Afflicted or become entangled with a Constant or some other group or creature, let us know. If you don't want your character to get killed unless asked first, let it be known. If you don't want your character to be hit on by guys or girls, or if you want exemption so people who don't abide by this request may get summarily kicked in the nether regions, then let us know. In the end this is a post-apocalyptic setting so there's got to be some suffering your character endures, lest this section of the character sheet essentially be the "Easy Mode?" section, but basic requests are all fine.