Not much to see here; just the normal stuff.

For the love of all that is good, please treat each other and myself with respect. I'm not expecting you to fellate me at all times because I'm the GM either, but at the very least you shouldn't be immediately attacking other people for making a mistake or--heaven forbid--making an error in their writing. That said, if someone points out an error, it would be nice if you'd edit your post for future reading.

If there's any sort of fight or disagreement, run it by me. I'd like to avoid dealing in absolutes, but when it comes to many aspects of how this will play out, I have the final say.

These rules are typical of the guild; I don't expect there to be a need for godmodding or anything of the sort, but please remember that other people exist. I do not want any cases of people suddenly teleporting behind people or anything, and doing that and adding something along the lines of, "Pssh... nothing personnel... kid," is grounds for a toxic and immediate ejection from the RP and banning from my future RPs _{not really; that was a joke.} Please avoid it anyways.

Mature content is allowed--that means you can swear, you can drink, you can inject one whole marijuana and disprove reefer madness (or prove them right somehow), and the beginnings of sex are OK. If you want to go any further than shutting the door and getting that mushy stuff (the foreplay foreplay) out of the way, unfortunately I'll have to tell you to take it to PMing ("unfortunate" being relative _{I know there are degenerates out there that love hard-core RP hand-holding and consensual cuddling})

Post quality is incredibly important. As per what I said on the interest check, "The minimum I set is at least two paragraphs, as per usual, but please aim to have longer, or narrative-rich posts as well. Narrative-rich means not simply including every single bit of detail in an attempt to make up for lack of quality with sheer volume, but instead crafting your work so that the most impact and important information is conveyed. I have recently listened to a book that would have been wonderful, if not for the clumsy application of detail, and I am not looking for anything like that."

Similar to some other RPs, given the nature of the building, it would be helpful if you had a small note regarding your location at the beginning of your posts.

Name:

*Gender: *Not necessary to fill out, for interest's sake. Just know that the Host will pick and choose pronouns based on your appearance_{and may choose to ignore any complaints}

*Age:

Appearance: Be vivid. If you'd like to include one, photos of any style are allowed.

Bio: Doesn't need to be a full life story, but there's a reason you've been invited, so be detailed. Make sure to include interesting tidbits and such. Give enough for the Host to have as much information as a new friend. I'm hoping for some racy details!

Abilities / Type of Abilities: "Magic," "Biological Feat," "Divine Gift," etc.

Equipment / Clothing: Let us know what you've got coming into the party. You can bring your axe, and odds are you won't be asked to hand it over unless you do something stupid to the Host and her belongings. You don't need to mention things that aren't immediately visible, but send me a PM, and be fair if someone is looking you over (best to handle it OOC and then write the staring in afterwards)

What you were doing before you came:

Other:

It is a little odd that superstrength, magic effects, telepathy, and other abilities don't function on other characters/chars from worlds without such things. I mean...I suppose it /might/ be to keep them from getting into nasty fights, but at the same time it feels odd. For example: would a character with a gun be able to shoot a character from a world that hasn't created guns yet (setting aside the whole "don't use your weapons, kids" thing for the moment). What about if technology degrades in char B's world, can char A's digital camera take a picture of them? If a char can lift a rock the weight of another person with ease, why can't they lift the other person with that same ease? (It's possible that your example implied that Carter could, but I'm not /entirely/ sure. Clarification would be appreciated.) Any species that uses some sort of additional sense -- say telepathy -- would be very thrown when they can't sense the minds of anyone else. And a species that relies upon, say, spatial awareness instead of vision would by this logic be completely unable to know where anyone is. So if I had brought Cecilly, she'd be truly blind in regards to other characters, instead of merely technically blind. Her eyes do not work, but she has an ability that lets her detect locations of things. It still interferes with other aspects of life, like reading, and any sort of long distance "sight" is right out. If char A the mage creates a fireball and throws it at char B from a world of no magic, is it just fire, and so would it burn? I mean, a fireball created normally would burn, so what if they literally /make/ a fireball, instead of just casting it as a spell? Or is it still magic, and so it would do nothing? How about a spear made of summoned ice? These are primarily combat examples, but there's other ways to employ them. Say, using Feather Fall or Fly on someone about to plummet to their doom, or creating an ice ramp from nothing. Can the mage chef feed others with food created from thin air? At what point does something cease being "other" and become properly tangible?

OH. Actually, to take this a step further, if there /is/ a species without any vision, does that mean vision ceases to work for all the other characters? I mean, the assumption that vision is standard is a human-centric version. Or, say, a species with very weak physical abilities -- would they suddenly be able to throw a human where before they could not, simply because if they were human they'd be able to?

...not that this affects Alys much, since she's functionally vanilla human, with a very few exceptions.

The guns thing does fall under "physical tech." You can shoot people, and it will affect them according to their own physiologies. However, if your gun comes from, say, a techmagic setting and uses information from the ether to make sure your bullets will always hit, this property will not work. If that also means that your bullet doesn't even fly right is something we'll have to discuss. If it works from a mechanical and chemical standpoint (relative to our real world) it will work.

For someone that comes from a technophobic universe, they will not affect the camera of a person taking their picture. The world's baseline physics are identical to our own. This can be unsettling or a good thing depending on your character, because someone that does not appear in photos will appear in photos taken during the gathering. Also as a baseline, people's biologies, unless stated otherwise, are similar to a real human's.

The John Carter example may not have been the best one when it came to explaining certain biological feats--as it stands my knowledge of John Carter comes from hazy memories of the movie. If I remember correctly, his abilities _{in the movie} came from being a human from Earth suddenly experiencing less than half of the force of gravity. It stands to reason that if he were some sort of actual superhuman that's a physical ability that he should have retained (although he had the muscle mass of a normal man.) As I don't have a means of measuring the amount of force someone can put out based on their muscle mass, I will have to say that physically, to each other, characters are like mundane humans. This is a special condition imposed by the Host, and if characters agree on it, they can allow others to use the full effects of their abilities on them. Think of it as enforcing consent between guests _{because with a pessimist's outlook, things can get very, very messy if a super-powerful brute viking didn't respect someone else.}

Unfortunately it would be true that an obligate telepath would feel very cut off from the rest of the characters (save for the above exception), but to that extent the Host has access to a wealth of experience to draw from to create personalities for the servants she will summon throughout the gathering. In the case of a character with a sensory process different from others, their biology is preserved. If your character is not human, they will have the same properties as a mundane member of their race. Further restraints on their abilities are applied accordingly; if they can cleave cattle-like beasts in half normally, they will not be able to do so to other guests without consent. The servants throughout the building are fair game _{but please be nice to them. They're there for your sake.} If the species depends on magic to perceive things, they will have access to it to that end, but if they have a special ability like seeing someone's magic capacity, for all intents and purposes, other guests will appear like objects to them unless they're the same species.

In the case of examples that you gave me, if your "magic energy" isn't just catching fire, and you're actually superheating air and containing it, that ball of hot gas will definitely hurt people. Please be honest with your character's existing magic though; if they aren't the type to reason that kind of thing out, and their magic isn't explained, they won't manage to get that fireball to do any damage; it'll just fizzle out on contact with another guest. In the case of the spear of ice, it's the same thing. If your magic energy is becoming ice or pulling it from the ether, it'll melt when it touches someone. If your character figures that they can take water and freeze it, it's fair game (which makes ice magic quite a bit more powerful compared to fire magic in this scenario.) The same consent exception remains as above if your character can't figure out manipulating the world around them instead of blindly casting. As for support magics and saving people's lives, unless your character specifically refuses to be affected by all forms of other people's abilities, "positive" effects will have the "positive" effect intended. The person falling to their doom will stop falling. In the case of healing magic used on an undead character, if the intent is to heal that character, the undead character will still be "healed." If you're trying to be clever and try to harm that undead character with positive energy, the effect will fizzle out. Intent is very, very important in the gathering's pocket dimension. You're in the Host's dimension, so there is no hiding your intentions from the world even if you can fool Gods. Please reason things out in IC and OOC.

If people want to eat the food that the mage chef makes, that food will be real to them. If they want to use that ice ramp, sure they can. As a caveat to the consent rule, if your mage makes that ice ramp and doesn't want other people to use it, they still can. In general, you can allow people to do things to/with you, but you cannot necessarily disallow certain things. You can disallow them from hurting you, but if you make a cake and someone wants to eat it, it will be considered a physical object unless it's poisoned or intended to do harm, in which case it will not be a real object to them unless they gave their consent for all abilities.

Here's a summary and extended listing of some of the rules I just sussed out:

Intent is the single greatest decider in the world beyond the base rules I set out.
Good intentions will affect people so long as they haven't disallowed all other guests' abilities from affecting them.
Harmful intentions will not affect people unless they specifically allow yours or everyone's abilities to affect them.
Mundane spells and objects will not affect others unless they want them to.
The world's dimension's physics are the same as the real world's. For simplicity's sake, we won't take into account if your gun's innards were designed with .78 G in mind, but anything greater than that difference and we might need to have a talk.
You maintain the biology of the most mundane member of your species, and magic that supports your existence will work.

I know there's some species, however, where "normal" is "connected telepathically to all the rest", but I think you covered that under the obligate telepath and no cleaving people parts. I think you might need to differentiate between something that's summoned and then exists (I conjure an ice spear, and it will stay if I drop it, and melt if I leave it) and that is thrown at someone, versus something requiring magic to sustain (I conjure an ice spear but if I lose focus it vanishes). My instincts say the latter wouldn't have an effect, but the former would because the magic is creating a physical object which then persists in the world, and once it's there it might as well be something you picked up from the setting.

Ironically I do have characters that use "magic" through physical effects -- one guy uses electricity, and the base source of any current he generates is manipulation of charges within his own body. Or the gal that pulls water from the air around her, so she can't use it in a desert, for example. And of course most earth-bender type characters generally use stuff that's already around, such as that levitated piano in your initial examples.

Answers to: Lady Grey, Lady Alyssana. Informally, she is Alyssana, and a few people can get away with calling her simply Alys. /Don't/ call her Alyssa. She will be very cross.

Gender: female

Age: late 30s / early 40s, but due to the way time and death function in the Neath her appearance is closer to early/mid 30s

Appearance: While Alys is not unpleasant to look at, she is no great beauty either. Yes, her skin is naturally pale where other ladies but go to efforts to appear so, but her thin lips are likewise lacking in any significant color. Her features are refined, but they are too sharp to be properly pretty. She is lean, but she is solid, where most ladies would prefer to be dainty. Naturally her clothing is not so tight-fitting as to emphasize it, but she is a very active woman and has the musculature to match. And while her waist is narrow, so too are her hips. As for her bosom, she does have one but it would hardly earn compliments without considerable assistance from corsets or padding. Her eyes are her best feature, a stormy grey with more or less blue depending on the day and the lighting. Her hair is a light brown that is closer to sandy or ash than it is to dirty blonde, with a bit of wave and not particularly long. She generally wears it pulled back from her face, pinned securely into some half-up style. She might wear it all up, but never all down.

Alyssana is clearly a lady of breeding, unless she's taking efforts not to appear so. She carries herself with the expected poise, and her posture is perfectly straight. But where other women might mince, Alys strides. Her step is firm, her stance confident. Even leaping between buildings in the Flit, or tangling with Rattus Faber brigands, she moves with easy grace.

If she draws the eye, it is more likely to be because of the force of her personality, or her presence, than anything else. There has always been an intensity about Alys, particularly in her eyes, where the reserved lady shows most of her emotions.

Bio: Alyssana's life started in a peculiar fashion. She and her twin brother were born to a completely amoral man, as part of an experiment dealing with souls. With the proper techniques, it is possible to change a person's nature. Christopher, Alyssana's brother, was to be the researcher and carry on his father's work; Alyssana was to be Chris's protector. They were raised in a remote part of Britain's countryside, with little human contact outside of Gerald, their master and teacher, as well as his servant Lani, a pale woman with very little in the way of personality. There were visits from Gerald's brother, as well as the occasional trip into town (more often for Alys than for Chris), but no one outside of that. Neither of the twins was aware they were experimental, nor that the man raising them was in fact their father -- until their eleventh year, when Alys learned Gerald's endgame: further modification so she would be unable to leave her brother, and unable to disobey him. By then a very independent child, what with mostly looking after herself and helping to raise her brother, Alys rebelled. She and Chris fled, and they made it quite a distance across the English countryside before a chance encounter resulted in them finding lodgings with the couple who eventually became their adopted parents.

Lord and Lady Grey were quite familiar with the shadowy world that lay underneath the skin of Victorian England. They were anomalies: members of the nobility but with strong ties to various groups lacking such pedigree, including in the shadows. Tutors were found to continue the twins' education in all areas, even the ones most would not discuss with the uninitiated.

Alys was never particularly close to her adopted parents, nor did she have much interest in the social circles of Britain's elite. She avoided parties and galas whenever she could, preferring instead the company of books, or various tutors. The friends she did make tended to be those with significant knowledge or skill in a particular area. Of particular note were Susan Therust, a monster hunter of some renown, and Lord Agimund, an occultist (and in fact a benevolent devil -- quite the rarity!) and eventually her mentor in a great many things.

At eighteen she was accepted into a women's college at Cambridge, and her future was bright. All this changed following the murder of her brother three years later. Even though she knew the identities of her biological parents, by then deceased, Lani had been a pale shadow of the woman she might have been before Gerald and his brother got hold of her, and Gerald himself was despicable. Her adopted parents were kind, but the connection was always somewhat impersonal. Her brother was her only real family, and she'd always been willing to do anything for him. When the law was unable to properly discipline those responsible, Alyssana took matters into her own hands.

She killed the one man that had been acquitted of her brother's murder due to strings pulled behind the scenes, after extracting from him all worthwhile information. Over the next several years, she transformed from a woman who might change the world to one who might gladly destroy it. Unwavering morals and compassion tempered by pragmatism became ruthless determination to progress no matter the cost, with ethics and kindness discarded as obstacles. This is not to say she changed her beliefs about what was right and wrong, for Alys had done no such thing. She knew very well that she was breaking rules and destroying her future, and she accepted her eventual imprisonment or execution as a foregone conclusion -- so long as she had vengeance first. Everyone was a tool to reach her goal, but none so much as she. By the time she followed the trail into the Neath she was a woman that however cheerful or charming she might appear, was in truth cold, calculating, and implacable. Her former nature only manifested in small acts with little bearing on anything else.

London had been stolen by the Bazaar and taken belowground a little over three decades before, and the fallen city was very different from the surface. Here devils walked freely, the cats knew secrets and might sometimes share them, death was a mere inconvenience, and there were even men with the faces of squid. Here too was where she first met Maxwell Bradford, a former soldier on a mission of his own. The lady did warn him of what would inevitably happen, and she did try to avoid treating him overly harshly -- for a person is hardly useful if they will have nothing to do with you, in most situations. But eventually the hopeless and rather foolish love he'd come to feel for her resulted in his heart being utterly crushed, and he left London altogether, so as not to chance meeting her again.

Despite her best efforts, and even though she was hardly in a position where she could acknowledge or act on it, Alys did care for Max in her own rather twisted way, but she would not spare the time to chase him and attempt to repair the relationship. She'd warned him. She'd known from the beginning what would happen, it was why she'd cut ties with anyone she cared for at the beginning of her quest. Not because she went out of her way give injury, but because if it came to sparing someone hurt or moving forward, the latter would be her choice, every time.

It was several more years before Alys finally sent the mastermind she sought on a trip down the silent river from which he would not return. Then she quietly went and turned herself in to the constables. It wasn't happiness, nor contentment, nor even lack of purpose. But she'd turned the world from something inherently wrong to something she could accept, and that was sufficient. Given her rather extensive list of crimes, the lady was surprised when she was merely imprisoned in New Newgate, even if it was in solitary and under increased guard. Still, she'd resolved to accept the consequences imposed, whatever they were.

Of course she'd never even considered the possibility that she might be set free /without/ further consequences, beyond those she'd created for herself among acquaintances. In fact, this might be worse than execution, for in a way Alyssana was the sort that thought her misdeeds should come with a price. She'd done them knowing they were wrong, and that accounts would need settling. How then was she released after less than a year?

It took a concerted effort from those that cared about her to bring her out of the depression that followed. They were those that had seen the tiny glimmers of an older light she'd been unable to completely smother, those that had benefited from her plausibly deniable kindnesses, her abrasive concern and didn't mind the rest. Progress was slow, but eventually the she was able to reassemble enough of herself that she could live as a person again. She would never get rid of the ruthless streak she'd cultivated, of course, nor would she be able to escape her regrets. But Lady Alyssana Grey was able to focus on something other than her vendetta, for the first time in a very long time.

She isn't entirely certain who is responsible for her freedom, but she suspects that the Masters had a role. As the Duchess has said, "In the deepest matters of the Bazaar, always look to love." And perhaps they had a hand in Maxwell's return to London. He too was changed, and a far less trusting fellow. Darker, less focused on the good, and not particularly caring who might get caught up in the crossfire. They were reacquainted when someone hired him to kill Alys for good. He'd not thought of her in years, had left his love for her far behind -- or so he thought. Face to face it was another matter, and he was quite unable to end her life.

Of course he holds no hope of her returning his affection -- she'd made /that/ quite clear. And Alys herself knows she has no right to ask. Additionally, however open Max's relationship with the lady he's currently seeing, she is not going to meddle in that. Particularly since she's rather old-fashioned about relationships. No, Alys had her chance, and she turned it down. The question, of course, is how does she reconcile a Maxwell that cannot hide his feelings particularly well, and who has no wish to stop spending time in her company, with another woman hopelessly in love with him, and jealous of his feelings for Alys?

Abilities / Type of Abilities: Aside from the fact that her soul has been altered, Alys does not possess any abilities beyond what it would be possible for a normal human to achieve. There is evidence to support some of her talents being due to Gerald's experimentation, but she is still well within the range of human possibility.

Equipment / Clothing: Alyssana dresses as would be expected of a Victorian lady. Tightly laced boots peek out from underneath a floor length skirt, for it would be scandalous to show a hint of ankle (not that she /hasn't/, when necessary, but it's not her preference). She prefers smaller bustles, and while she does wear a corset she sees no need to lace it as tightly as many try to. Her blouses are frequently high-collared and longsleeved, and she wears very little in the way of jewelry. The lady prefers simple elegance to ornate frippery, and her day-to-day outfits reflect that. Subtle embroidery is, in her opinion, far superior to excessive lace or flashy embellishment. Her favored colors are navy blue and dark grey.

Alys is an excellent fighter. She is also proficient with knives, and while she does prefer a sword carrying one around is really not feasible much of the time. Instead, she has several blades concealed on her person, including one in the sole of her boot.

What she was doing before she came: Alys had just been confronted by a rather angry Sophia (Max's current significant other, though it's an open relationship). She assured the woman she has no intention of getting between the two of them -- and now she has to figure out just how she's going to handle the situation. She suspects it may be necessary to stop associating with Maxwell, a thought she does not enjoy entertaining.

Other:
She currently works as a professor of anthropology at Benthic College, though she does take various other short-term jobs on occasion, including monster hunting and detective or police work.

Alys is staunch Naytheist. She likes the Church about as much as she likes the devils.

She moves in unusual circles, to put it delicately. Her friends include such people as the Honey-Addled Detective, the Barbed Wit, the Duchess, the Raggedy King (more rags than king), the Jovial Contrarian (a revolutionary), Feducci (tomb-colony prince and expert duelist possessing a certain fascination with death), various Clay Men and Rubberies (both among the dregs of society, the latter moreso than the former -- at least the Clay Men are good labor!), most of the urchins that live in the Flit, a number of Rattus Faber, and possibly the Boatman himself. Certainly they play chess on a semiregular basis.

Alys is from the Fallen London game setting, as created by Failbetter Games. Think Victorian London taken underground with devils and Cthulhu mythos and a touch of steampunk, and a whole lot of awesome lore. <3

Maxwell Bradford belongs to my good friend Slyblue, and the two have had a significant role in shaping Alys's path since her arrival in the Neath.

Chris, Gerald, Susan, and Agimund are based on characters belonging to my favorite DM, Sandy. The original characters have similar relationships to the character that Alys is based on (one of mine).