@Fetzen
That new link worked, so I suggest linking it into the profile.

Not only is he a mage, but he possesses a tome that, with enough time and research, could be used in the hands of a mage like himself to return you to your own world. The way you described his backstory, I could also very easily imagine that scientific-minded mage who screwed your character over to have been affiliated to the Arcane Tower in some way. Our characters just flow together very naturally.

@Shoryu Magami I think it is a quite interesting situation, because there is some metastability in it: Vekyzz could either start thinking 'Yes! Finally someone who could get me back home!" or he could start thinking 'Oh god... yet another screwball that wants to fiddle around with things he doesn't fully understand and throws into jeopardy without caring!'. They could become good friends or start hating each other if things go really wrong.

@Fetzen
Exactly. There's a lot of potential here, and when I start introducing certain antagonistic forces I have in mind there's a good chance that my character won't be the only one they're actually pursuing.

Edit: I might work out that code you're using and put my pictures in that way instead, actually.

@Shoryu Magami It's a perfectly ordinary [.img]...[./img] BB-code in a hider (remove dots in tags). This board doesn't allow HTML code for ordinary users (for good reason).

It will definitely be interesting when our characters meet for the first time. Vekyzz' 'otherworldlyness' pretty much is written on his face, or no... in these glowing eyes and his horns and his straightforward inhuman physique.

@Fetzen
It's been a good few years since I did any role-playing on a forum (I've hosted more than one of my own, and joined a few others before and during that), so I haven't been in my image hosting account for a long time. Due to that, I'll probably need to get another image hosting account, or reactivate my old one, before I could use that code. That's why so far all I've been doing is creating clickable links.

Also, to be honest, my appearance will be misleading at first too, since I'm probably going to begin the story under my illusion-based form.

On another note, my fiancé just made a point that @FickleSickle's character is going to freak out if she joins the game. We actually don't have any female characters in the party yet, but that'll change if she gets involved.

@Shoryu Magami I see the point :D
Vekyzz doesn't have this problem. His problem will be more how to keep his reactor cool and running (that is: not exploding) day in, day out. How many times is he gonna hit the ceiling with his horns or get stuck in the doorframe ?

@Fetzen
Lol, pretty much, yeah.

Emmanuel's basically something I just put together from how I imagined a storyline working for all the various mages I usually play in various RPG/MMORPG/etc games, though admittedly I often create the main character of my story project in those games when I'm able to, which is why I actually severely watered down a few elements of that character and adapted them into Emmanuel. I normally only like role-playing using my project's setting, but with how easy going this RP is I was able to relax a bit, which isn't something I normally do. Some of the factors include a retuning of certain elements that are based off that main character (the soul destroying curse/seal on his powers, him being an enemy of a powerful organization/conspiracy, etc) and just made less powerful/broken for the sake of this setting, and he also adopted the concepts of having bad luck and health issues from that main character too (though in the case of my story character, both of those drawbacks play out far differently to how I imagine them working here).

@Shoryu Magami
Vekyzz is a tad of an adaptation of another character I had to abandon because the RP I created him for never got going. Several main elements have stayed the same while I've replaced others to suit the scenario. I was halfway on my way of making a Troll when I remembered this one.

@Fetzen
Ah, I see, so both characters are essentially remixes of other characters, more or less.

Probably tossing the proverbial hat into this ring. Now I need to decide if I'm going with the mage girl or the elf archer chick. XD Also whether or not Shoryu's character and mine are already acquainted.

@Ailyn Evensen
I did mention to @Halvtand that you might end up wanting to join this under the "Healer" archetype, since that's technically your thing. Admittedly, you usually prefer Healer/Archer hybrids, so if you're unable to find a trope or concept using this role-play's format that allows for both of them, it makes sense you'd need to pick one or the other.

I'd imagine the elf character would add more diversity to the races, but they'd be less likely to be previously acquainted with Emmanuel than someone who knows healing magic would, since the latter could easily be passed off as his apprentice; an idea we discussed outside of the site. Though, to be fair, I don't recall anything in the rules that says an elf can't use magic; they often do. I just can't think of the most fitting trope for something like this off the top of my head. Since we don't use things like elves or dwarves in the story, I've never familiarized myself with tropes involving them.

We can look into some tropes once my browser is more reliable and/or I've actually rested. Going on around 24 hours without sleep now. Of course, you might just decide to pick one or the other for simplicity in this particular RP.

@Shoryu MagamiI didn't stay worried for that long, with bad health and luck you've got a pair of nasty disadvantages left even if the curse is lifted. I mean, if you get too confident in your fireball-slinging we can always have you sneeze in the face of a dragon and watch the show from afar.

@FetzenAah, there you are. Yeah, I've looked at the guy before and find him quite fitting for our small gathering. You may get his arse into the char-tab. Also, please describe the demon race as you see it a bit more.

So, we've got a "Death Knight", a "Wizard" who is considered a traitor, and a "Demon". We're not exactly looking like the most orthodox heroic bunch, are we? To be fair, none of us seem to be legitimately evil (most of us are either good with bad publicity, or neutral, it seems), but for a role-play that's supposed to be based off of classical tropes, I find it a little ironic that there's not a single conventionally straightforward heroic character among us. Emmanuel seems to be the closest we've got.

Yeah, it's funny how things work out once the characters starts coming in. I was expecting the usual round of heroes as well, but this could be a lot of fun. I actually don't think that a regular "good guy" would suit the party as it looks now. I don't know if you've seen the "the gamers"-films, but we'd have to send the paladin away a lot I reckon.

@Ailyn Evensen Aah, so this is the one I've heard the legends about. Welcome to the pit of bottomless despair and agony.
With diversity in the group as motivation we already have a mage, if you go elf/archer the step from there to druid/witch is not a big leap which would allow you to do healing stuff as well as other nature-based... stuff, and things. However, no one said we can't double up on things, so go ahead and do what you do. If you decide that you don't want to heal then throw it out the window.

@Shoryu Magami Yes, we are lacking both dwarves and elves as it looks right now. About them using magic, I feel that it is up to the creator of the race (in this game). If we stumble upon a dwarf squatting in a dusty corner of a tavern and the guy's pissed about being the only dwarf that can't do magic then the canon is that all dwarves (present company excluded) can do magic.
I think we'll need some place to store and define the canon as the game goes on. I'll start with the first OOC-post, but if this takes off I might create a wiki.

Here's my guy:

Name: Baxxink Hagglepocket.
Title/Nickname: Often known as “That bastard who stole my money”, but it’s a bit long for a nickname.
Age: 36.
Gender: Male.
Race: Goblin.
Profession: Thief.
Trope/Archetype: The sneaky guy
Appearance:
Equipment:
Clothes - for wearing.
Dagger - for stabbing.
Short bow + quiver of arrows - for long distance stabbing.
Fake beard - (special item) for camouflage.

Background: Baxxink was born into a goblin community like most goblins, and like most goblin communities it was violently destroyed by a troupe of adventurers that passed by looking for treasure. As one of few survivors Baxxink had to use his natural gifts of stealth and agility to fill his stomach and set out on the path he’s been on until now.

Pros:
Stealthy - can move silently and stick to the shadows very well.
Quick and agile - clawed fingers (and toes), low weight, long limbs and a greater range of movement compared to humans means that Baxxink has a lot of options for movement.
Cunning - not clever, smart or intelligent, Baxxink’s mind is focused on finding and exploiting weaknesses.

Cons:
Soft - doesn’t wear a lot of padding, things will hurt.
Hated race - have you ever heard someone say “Oh, please come in mister Goblin, how nice to meet you, would you like some pie?” Didn’t think so.
Remember, no magic - goblins are magically retarded.

Other: Things will go missing around Baxxink.

@Halvtand Well, I wouldn't exactly say I'm anything of legend xD but yeah, hi. I'll have the details of my character worked out later today. I just got off work about an hour ago, and I'm beat. If I can make it work, I'd like to mix the elf archer with a bit of mage. Worst case scenario, I'll just be good with potions :3
For now, it's off to bed. Night!

@Shoryu MagamiI didn't stay worried for that long, with bad health and luck you've got a pair of nasty disadvantages left even if the curse is lifted. I mean, if you get too confident in your fireball-slinging we can always have you sneeze in the face of a dragon and watch the show from afar.

Lol, of course something like that'd happen to me. Anyway, I mostly thought the curse would work because generally speaking "Wizard" characters are ridiculously powerful compared to the rest of their team mates in this sort of world (Galdalf/Saruman > everyone in LoTR, for example), so it only seems fair that I have to work for it, and it was an idea I could easily recycle and modify from one of my own characters.

<Snipped quote by Shoryu Magami>

Yeah, it's funny how things work out once the characters starts coming in. I was expecting the usual round of heroes as well, but this could be a lot of fun. I actually don't think that a regular "good guy" would suit the party as it looks now. I don't know if you've seen the "the gamers"-films, but we'd have to send the paladin away a lot I reckon.

I haven't seen the films, but Emmanuel himself would be considered a hero, not an "Anti-Hero". He's more like "Hero With Bad Publicity". As I've mentioned earlier, the Arcane Tower has rather high influence in the world because a vast number of court magicians to various kings are actually people who come from this place, so being on their list is a pretty big deal. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they were behind what happened to @FickleSickle's character too.

I should, however, make a point that Ailyn is more than likely going to make a more heroic character too. Unless she decides to use something highly unorthodox to what she usually levitates towards, most of the characters she likes are usually not evil characters or even neutral characters.

@Ailyn Evensen Aah, so this is the one I've heard the legends about. Welcome to the pit of bottomless despair and agony.
With diversity in the group as motivation we already have a mage, if you go elf/archer the step from there to druid/witch is not a big leap which would allow you to do healing stuff as well as other nature-based... stuff, and things. However, no one said we can't double up on things, so go ahead and do what you do. If you decide that you don't want to heal then throw it out the window.

She's a healer at heart, so, like she said, if she doesn't do it with magic she'll end up doing it through alchemy and magical potions. I think it's more an argument of where the healing comes from more than whether or not it will exist. The argument could also be made that, as a "Wizard", not a "Black Mage", Emmanuel could have healing spells in his list as well.

@Shoryu Magami Yes, we are lacking both dwarves and elves as it looks right now. About them using magic, I feel that it is up to the creator of the race (in this game). If we stumble upon a dwarf squatting in a dusty corner of a tavern and the guy's pissed about being the only dwarf that can't do magic then the canon is that all dwarves (present company excluded) can do magic.
I think we'll need some place to store and define the canon as the game goes on. I'll start with the first OOC-post, but if this takes off I might create a wiki.

When I made that statement, I was referring to how my official story project (which Ailyn has taken part in since we've met, but has existed long before I met her) isn't a setting where things like elves or dwarves are relevant, so in all the time we've gone over tropes we've never bothered with these sort of ones. Still, I think you're on the right track with the race creator deciding whether they can use magic or not, though elves at least usually are magically inclined (though it is, like you said, usually nature-based magic, not more arcane magic like what Emmanuel does, which is why I felt the whole master and apprentice idea me and her discussed at one point might only work if she was human, unless the type of magic Emmanuel uses can be taught to other races, which isn't a terrible idea since humans aren't naturally magically inclined in the first place).

I think if things hit off a wiki would be a good idea, and I don't mind helping either. To be completely honest, there's no way I could introduce my story project's setting for people to RP with on this site (assuming I was willing to start spoiling enough of the details so people could register characters) with the current format of how these topics are created. IC/OOC/Characters just isn't enough, honestly. There's no doubt in my mind a wiki would be required for it to work, so I completely relate to you on that thought.

On one more note, you've put in an interesting character yourself. I'm guessing you hadn't originally planned a goblin but after you realized we're all basically not popular with the authorities you rolled with it? It works, at any rate, but with such an unconventional bunch for this sort of story it really does make me wonder about the plot direction.

@Halvtand
Another thought's come to my mind, so I'll run it by you, especially since this might end up applying to other people too. Are we thinking about having a place to store or keep tabs on any antagonists or other recurring NPCs that people end up creating for this thing? I've already got a few of these characters brewing around in my head and I wasn't sure where you'd want information about them posted up, if at all. This is technically something I'm wondering how the site in general handles too, not just this one RP.

{WIP}
Name: Walter De-Cuthbert
Title/Nickname: Weiß "the wise"
Age: 35
Gender: Cis male who uses male pronouns
Race: Half-elf
Profession: School teacher
Trope/Archetype: White Mage
Appearance:

Equipment:
DM guide: An ancient text passed down from one Discovery Master to the next. This tome has the knowledge of all the masters before it and is somewhere between one million fortune cookies and an encyclopedia of great side-stepping challenges.
Background: (Keep this short)
Pros:
St. Cuthbert is the GOD OF COMMON SENSE, as such, his people always exercise simple answers to complex problems.
He's the healer, boosting others when he isn't reattaching limbs.
Cons:
He is by no means any front-line fighter. While his healing spells keep him standing compared to the black mage, he is more annoying in his resistance to fall over than any reliable tactic.
Other: (anything else worth mentioning)

@knighthawk
Here my fiancé is right in the middle of working on a half-elf who focuses on healing. Well, she's not exactly about to change it, so our party might just need to double on a few things, considering we've been working on this for a few days now and aren't going to want to change what she has. Besides any issues created by that, I'll save my comments until you're finished.

@Shoryu Magami
Well, the joke with the paladin in "the gamers" is that he is a lawful good "babysitter" in a rather chaotic evil group. A paladin cannot sit idly by while evil takes place (and since he's the GMs character he can probably kill the party), so whenever they have to do something evil like an interrogation one will go to the door, look out and shout "Hey, is that an evildoer doing evil out there?" When the paladin is outside looking for the evildoer the group will do whatever they do...

I like the idea you have going with your Arcane Tower. It makes sense in a world where magic and a gathering like that exists that they have some respect and reputation. However, I do hope we'll get some kind of "evil/corruption within"-story with them as well.

I didn't realise you were talking about your own project there, good thing it worked out both ways. The race creator-thing actually works for everything, the creator has first dibs on everything. If you step into the tavern first you get to decide what's in there, you get to describe the cave, the dragon and the treasure if you're the first to see it. The others can then add things to that description as long as it doesn't collide with what has been said before.
The treasure cave in Disney's Aladdin is a good example. It is filled to the brim with treasure, which the player of Abu has described in detail and so starts to fill his pockets. The player of Aladdin is next and describes the room with the lamp, ignoring the treasure, instead reaching for the lamp. Third is the player of the carpet, who speaks for the cave as Aladdin takes the lamp and reveals that the treasure really is just an illusion and initiates the collapse, rushing to Aladdin to pick him up.
The treasure was real and an element in the story all the way up to the point where it was revealed to be an illusion and started to melt. It would not have worked if one player saw the treasure and the next said that the room was completely empty.

I see more and more games, at least in the advanced section, use wikis to keep track of what's going on. Fandom-games have been doing it for ages to try to stay relevant to the canon. Some games just have an enormous amount of lore and backstory that needs to be available to the players, and I agree that the current format doesn't really support that kind of game. I do welcome your help if/when we take the step to a wiki, as it will require some work with moving text and arranging it all properly.
To be fair, not that long ago we had to make do with just the IC/OOC, so things are a lot more organised now.

On one more note, you've put in an interesting character yourself. I'm guessing you hadn't originally planned a goblin but after you realized we're all basically not popular with the authorities you rolled with it? It works, at any rate, but with such an unconventional bunch for this sort of story it really does make me wonder about the plot direction.

That is exactly right. I was planning to do a sneaky character all along, but I wanted one or two players to post their character concepts first and show me what they thought was a good character for this kind of game. Once I saw that we were going for unconventional characters the choice of goblin was given. Sneaky, kind of bad but not necessarily evil and of course the beard-thing. I've lifted that from an old RPG I used to play with my friends years ago where the goblins actually thought that if they just put a fake beard on they'd look like dwarves and could walk the streets unharmed.

I wanted some player characters as a base because that way I wouldn't limit the other players to my decision. Instead it would allow them to start co-creating the game with their characters as first contribution. I supplied the basic structure of the game, they supply the direction.

Plot will be what we make of it, we can follow whatever path we choose and do what we want at the end of it. If we stumble upon the great castle Camelot we can either feast and dance with the king or say "On second thought, let's not go to Camelot, it is a silly place".
One thing that I find really interesting is that we don't even have to stick together as a group. If one of us feels that their character has something more important to do than whatever the party is doing, they can go off on their own private adventure and (maybe) rejoin the group later. If the good characters suddenly find the evil ones repulsive the game may evolve into a "good vs evil"-game. Or maybe we develop a meta-plot and follow it like in the classic RPGs. It's all in the hands of our future selves instead of our past selves.

Another thought's come to my mind, so I'll run it by you, especially since this might end up applying to other people too. Are we thinking about having a place to store or keep tabs on any antagonists or other recurring NPCs that people end up creating for this thing? I've already got a few of these characters brewing around in my head and I wasn't sure where you'd want information about them posted up, if at all. This is technically something I'm wondering how the site in general handles too, not just this one RP.

Generally I think most games would like to have that kind of info written up like proper characters and either posted in the OOC for everyone to see or only to the GM via PM. For this game I would prefer if you hold on to the info until we actually meet whatever it is you have planned, and then present them as people in-game.
I'll do my best to search the IC and grab important info and collect it in the OOC opening post, at least to start with. Of course, you can all help with this by copy-pasting important stuff you write and posting it here in the OOC.

@Shoryu Magami@Ailyn Evensen@Fetzen@FickleSickle
Important info for everyone.

I've had a thought about posting length and arrived at the conclusion that it is suboptimal. The rules states two paragraphs of text per post, I believe that three paragraphs will be better suited for this game, and it will make things a lot clearer.
In each post we will not only have to react to whatever has happened since our last post and write out what we want to do next, we also have to resolve whatever actions the guy before us wants to do, in two paragraphs it will get messy.
With three paragraphs to work with a post may look like this:

§1: Results of previous poster's actions. This way the player won't have to read the entire post to figure out what happened or if it is irrelevant to their own character.
§2: Reaction to what has happened, new info, actions, thoughts, feelings... You get the drill.
§3: Declaration of next course of action. This is what the next poster will need to resolve.

Does that seem fair?

Name: Faerveren Kearney
Title/Nickname: Her father first started calling her Fae, and most people end up calling her that too. Other elves will refer to her by her full given name.
Age: 97, but appears to be 24.
Gender: Female.
Race: Half breed elf. Human father and high elven mother.
Profession: Alchemist
Trope/Archetype: Our Elves Are Different

Appearance:
161cm/5'3"
Equipment:

• A wooden bow that has been hand painted with flowering vines all over it and an enchanted quiver of arrows.
• Alchemists bag of supplies (herbs, supplements, essences, potion bottles).
• An opal gemstone pendant on a delicate golden chain. It was given to her by her father for her 18th birthday. Other than sentimental value, it holds no power.

Background: Faeveren’s parents, Malrin and Samuel had first met when she’d found him gravely injured in the woods surrounding her clan. He’d been in a recent skirmish and his group had left him for dead. She nursed him back to health, and well, the rest is history. Malrin was a member of the highest council and marrying a human would have meant exile from the clan, but because she had done so much for them, they had made a sort of exception for her and her family. Fae was brought up to be well rounded in many subjects but she had taken an extreme liking to Alchemy. Samuel insisted she know how to defend herself, and taught her basic sword fighting skills and Malrin taught her archery. Fae had never liked close combat, so she chose to continue her studies in archery later. Just as she had begun to mature in elven years, mortal time had caught up with her father and he passed away when she was 65. For years, Fae struggled with the idea that her and her mother would long outlive her father, but she was never quite ready for the day that would eventually come. To this day, she continues to grieve.

The other elves of the clan had been chatting in hushed tones about the halfblooded girl since the day she was born, so she had become used to the sideways glances and the hesitant smiles. But after she’d met Ernst, it got worse. After Fae consulted with her mother, Malrin came to terms with her daughter’s wish to leave the clan and go out on her own. She told Fae that she was welcome home any time, but Fae had a feeling that it may be a while before she returned. She spent some time with the wood elves (as they were less narcissistic and more openly friendly to outsiders than the high elves were) and honed her skills. With her knowledge of alchemy, she sold potions to other travelers as she went from town to town, meeting new people and learning new alchemic recipes.

Pros:

• Potions/Alchemy Mastery from many years of hard work and practice.
• Despite retaining a youthful purity and having the appearance of one who is still learning, she has experience and intelligence long over a normal human.
• Her overall demeanor is a very likeable one. She’s warm-hearted, compassionate and wins over those around her. She also happens to be very proficient at the ‘‘puppy dog eyes’’.

Cons:

• She tends to always think the best in people (even if they are well known to others to not be so) and often, thinks of others before herself. So much so that the idea of self-care becomes a second thought to her in a dangerous situation. These traits in smaller amounts are usually considered pros, but as the saying goes: “Too much of a good thing…”. Going out of her way to assist others earned her a bit of scorn from her mother’s clan.
• She’s incredibly self-deprecating and very hard on herself. She tends to apologize for everything, even if she didn’t do anything wrong, and will blame herself for something going wrong, no matter if she’s alone or with a party.
• For an elf, she has a lot of phobias. She suffers not only from a fear of large crowds, but also claustrophobia in dark, unfamiliar places, and skeletons. Sometimes she would travel at sunset just to avoid the crowds of people who usually come out during the day. Her overarching shyness also drives her tendencies to move around at less crowded times. Travel at night in new territories is only possible with adequate lighting. These fears produce a tightness in her chest which makes it harder to breathe and extreme cases will cause a tearful breakdown.

Other: Faerveren offered an old wizard by the name of Ernst Leblanc some food and a place to stay while he was on his pilgrimage. In return, he enchanted her quiver of arrows so that she may never run out. Shortly after he had left, word of Faerveren’s generosity had spread to the other elves and she soon became the topic of conversation for aiding one who was of an "inferior race". This irritated her to no end, as she was half-blooded human herself and had already been the subject of mockery due to this fact. Only because of her mother’s status within the clan was she allowed to live at her current residence. She was already on the verge of leaving; citing the other elves constant criticism of other races and insulting those of lower intelligence, but this was the final straw.