No story works without want. Whether the object of one's desire is a person, an object, an experience, status, power, or something as simple as to survive or to be remembered, it drives every living thing -and some things that can scarcely be called living- to action. Of course, this isn't a revelation—in fact, it borders on asinine overcomplication. All the same, motivations are vitally important, foundational elements of characters of all shapes and sizes. But what if I told you there was a machine that could makes such wishes reality?
For 3000 years, a city stood on a stretch of land in the middle of the ocean, two isthmuses connecting it to the bordering countries. More than 500 square miles across, and situated in the middle of the most ancient part of the world, it is a city that has seen it all. It's seen empires rise and fall, felt iron grip of totalitarianism, enjoyed golden ages of trade, culture, and exploration, and been home centuries upon centuries of art. It's a place people have gone to find fame, fortune, family, and even themselves, and millions have lived and died there. It's a place like nowhere else on earth, a pillar of civilization whose face changes and changes but never fades away. Yet, today its streets are empty. The rain spatters on cars abandoned in the streets, the storefronts' lonely lights have no-one to see them, the churches once alive with song now host a silent mass, and goods sit untended in the market stalls.
Only one little islet off the shore of the mainland still stirs: the land that belongs to the Inquisitional College. Established as a joint venture between various governments after the world's brightest city went dark, the huge institute of sends its historical scholars and seekers of truth into the place now known only as the City of Echoes to find out what happened. Years have passed since then, and the lack of any findings coupled with the eeriness of the anomaly have conspired to make the world want to forget the city ever existed. Not long ago, however, the College began to turn up odd objects throughout the city, culminating in a singular, fascinating discovery: a device the size of a truck, nestled inside the Old Basilica, oddly shaped and of unknown origin. When a man possessed by curiosity placed his hand upon the dial in its center, the machine turned on, and from it issued a proclamation the scholars would never forget.
Thirty-three souls will mark the road to granting one's greatest desire
Since then, the machine has been silent, but the light bleeding from between its metal plates has never dimmed. All attempts to breach its exterior and determine what makes it tick have failed. In the meantime, more anomalous objects have turned up throughout the City of Echoes, including a case of thirty-two egg-shaped devices to be worn as pendants. The College's top minds, having brainstormed in secret for weeks on what the machine could have meant, finally hatched a plan: to bring together thirty-two contestants with hearts full of desire to fight and lay claim to one another's souls, so that the winner might find out for them what this 'wishing machine' could really do.
In summary, the Crucible is a tournament being held by a creepy college investigating the goings-on in an abandoned city. The premise revolves around the use of items discovered in the city known as phylacteries. These pendants, when worn and activated, synchronize themselves to the soul of the wearer. When a competitor is defeated, the soul of the loser is transmitted to and stored in the phylactery of the winner, and the grand winner of the tournament -having amassed the souls of every other competitor- will have the chance to use the Machine to grant his or her wish.
The characters themselves are pivotal parts of this RP. The title says multiversal, but do take note of the quotation marks. In this story, you may make your own character or any character you've previously created, ever, from any universe. You could have a character from the world of any game, movie, book, or whatever, including pre-existing RPs (this is your chance to revive an old character you liked from an RP that died). However, this character does have to be your original creation. There's one other way in which your character is important: in the sheet, there's a section called 'Echo' which will be explained in the sheet, that in essence I will use to create a zone in the ever-changing City of Echoes with personal significance to your character. I hope that you will be able to enjoy the extreme freedom you have in creating your character to the fullest. You could have a human, a dwarf, a robot, a golem, an animal, anything, from any era, whatever you please.
However, this does not mean that things will be entirely character-driven. When you begin, your character will be randomly placed in an area in the City of Echoes along with a randomly chosen opponent. You won't need to get to fighting immediately; there will be a lot to explore and do. The maximum amount of players in this RP is 16, and every player can have two characters. However, one character will have to be designated as your main character, and the other (if you make one) as a side character. Side characters will become NPCs, and in the first round of the tournament, every player will fight an NPC. After that, it's PvP. College officials will be in the city to make sure that matches proceed in a proper tournament fashion; the first person to win a duel won't be able to fight again until there's another winner so that a 'Round 2' match can begin, for instance.
The other big thing to note about this RP is the manner in which PvP will be going down. My own experience with PvP across many roleplays hasn't been great. Some people, wanting to avoid things like unsightly wounds or consequences for their mistakes, don't let their character get hit. Others autohit. Some fights progress terribly slowly, with every little thing requiring input from both parties. All of these are problems that I hope to solve with my system.
When two players get into a fight, here's how it's going to go down. Each person will write a couple paragraphs about the fight, including the scenery, the interactions, the actual battle, and so on. This includes taking control of the other character. Essentially, each side makes their own version of how a section of fight goes down. Once each person posts their version of a part of the battle, all players (including the fighting players) will get the chance to vote on which one they like more using the Like feature. The suggested criteria include quality of writing, coolness factor, handling of the opposing character, and overall flow. After an amount of time agreed to before the battle, the votes are tallied, and the winning version becomes canon, with the losing portion being edited into a hider. Then the next stage of the battle begins, with both players playing off what became canon, but the next portion could go either way. The first to three rounds won is the overall winner of the fight, with that player's third round deciding the battle. If players feel like they want to go on longer, the amount of rounds needed to win can be changed. In terms of voting, I am able to jump in and make a decision if I feel foul play is going on. So write well, write fairly, and judge fairly.
I mentioned before that defeating an opponent wins their soul, but the truth is a little different. To get the opponent's soul, the easiest and fastest way is to kill the opponent. After the loser dies, his or her soul is immediately stored in the winner's phylactery. However, a soul can be 'extracted' from an opponent by linking two phylacteries—one is 'plugged in' to the other, and the one that's doing the plugging is the one that gets the soul. Soul extraction, unfortunately, causes a lot of pain to the loser, and after the loser's soul is taken, the loser becomes the winner's ally, unable to view the winner as an enemy and is more inclined to do what the winner commands. Death is a real possibility in this game for your character, but if you are so inclined, there are ways you can be revived, or you can make another character who can enter the city as a 'spectator'. There's lots to do in the City of Echoes even if you've lost the tournament, such as find special Artifacts that the College found that will help your character (or an ally) fight, survive, or discover the place's secrets
One last thing: the phylactery has one other function. If the wearer is in a high emotional state, usually from despair, grief, or anger, it is capable of transforming the wearer into a monstrous form if the wearer loses control. The means of transformation and the resulting form varies immensely between wearers, but all transformations result in more power and a 'bloodlusted', insane state of mind, though the severity of the insanity can also vary. This frenzy can only be naturally reverted by taking another contestant's soul. If a frenzied competitor loses their soul but doesn't die, that competitor 'shrivels' down into a weakened and pitiful but still monstrous state, regaining some sanity but not all. If your character has a transformation ability already, that ability will be locked for use with this mechanic
1. Courtesy – treat your fellow players, and their characters, with respect. If there's some kind of problem, try and sort it out in a rational manner, and don't hesitate to approach me. Don't make a mockery of other peoples' characters; play them in a manner that would make the other player proud
2. Integrity – don't try to cheat the system, whether by persuading people to vote in a certain way using spurious means, or create problems by changing a vote at the last second or after a match has been decided. Don't add powers to your character that weren't made clear in your sheet
3. Perseverance - posting every few days is highly encouraged, especially when you're interacting with somebody else. Try not to make people wait; getting involved in an RP like this is a responsibility in its own right. If you need absence, tell me rather than simply remaining silent and leaving me to wonder what happened. If you don't like the way something is going, talk to me rather than dropping out. If two weeks pass without a post, I will notify you of the beginning of a three-day probation, after which you will be kicked for inactivity--unless you have a really good excuse. Sorry, but that's the way it has to be
4. Self-control – no usage of outside information IC. For instance, when your character gains an artifact, I'll give you its description IC to add to your inventory, but even though you know what it does, your character has to find out. No godmodding outside of special combat
5. Indomitable spirit – this is a competition, and you're here to win! Write your best, go for the goal, and if you're beaten, accept loss gracefully. The better your behavior, the likelier it is for something special to come your way—for instance, your beloved character, slain in a fight, may be brought back to life
Don't forget: you can make both a main character and an NPC character. Depending on how many NPC characters there are, I may allow more than one per character, but keep in mind that chances are you won't be able to play them. The player cap is 16, and the NPC count is 16 as well. If you are inclined, you can also create 'guest NPCs' which may appear in the city as companions, quest-givers, or whatever. In this case, there will never be a Frenzy section, and delete whatever sections you don't use
A vast metropolis that's been around for over three thousand years, standing as one of the world's most cultural, industrial, and beautiful cities, but today it stands silent. Not even its true name remains. Its streets are inexplicably empty, save for the contestants who hope to win the Crucible and gain their wish, and for certain other parties shrouded in mystery. At the simplest level, it can be broken into two overarching zones: uptown and downtown.
Spread out, laid back, and with more of a focus on the finer things in life, Uptown is the place to look for the City of Echoes' history, nature, art, and mid-to-high-class housing. It presents a smorgasbord of fascinating locals to live in, work in, visit, or all three. A seemingly disproportionate amount of its space is dedicated to the Park, a refuge of the untamed unknown within the massive city
The true heart of the City of Echoes. This is the 'inner city', its center stuffed with towering highrises, and between them like a vast maze of concrete and steel run the avenues. In its heyday, the city's downtown was a constant, frenetic rush of activity, the hustle and bustle of people scrambling to live their everyday lives making some desensitized to humanity. Crime ran more rampant here than elsewhere, and even with the people gone, it remains a treacherous and confusing place.
For 3000 years, a city stood on a stretch of land in the middle of the ocean, two isthmuses connecting it to the bordering countries. More than 500 square miles across, and situated in the middle of the most ancient part of the world, it is a city that has seen it all. It's seen empires rise and fall, felt iron grip of totalitarianism, enjoyed golden ages of trade, culture, and exploration, and been home centuries upon centuries of art. It's a place people have gone to find fame, fortune, family, and even themselves, and millions have lived and died there. It's a place like nowhere else on earth, a pillar of civilization whose face changes and changes but never fades away. Yet, today its streets are empty. The rain spatters on cars abandoned in the streets, the storefronts' lonely lights have no-one to see them, the churches once alive with song now host a silent mass, and goods sit untended in the market stalls.
Only one little islet off the shore of the mainland still stirs: the land that belongs to the Inquisitional College. Established as a joint venture between various governments after the world's brightest city went dark, the huge institute of sends its historical scholars and seekers of truth into the place now known only as the City of Echoes to find out what happened. Years have passed since then, and the lack of any findings coupled with the eeriness of the anomaly have conspired to make the world want to forget the city ever existed. Not long ago, however, the College began to turn up odd objects throughout the city, culminating in a singular, fascinating discovery: a device the size of a truck, nestled inside the Old Basilica, oddly shaped and of unknown origin. When a man possessed by curiosity placed his hand upon the dial in its center, the machine turned on, and from it issued a proclamation the scholars would never forget.
Thirty-three souls will mark the road to granting one's greatest desire
Since then, the machine has been silent, but the light bleeding from between its metal plates has never dimmed. All attempts to breach its exterior and determine what makes it tick have failed. In the meantime, more anomalous objects have turned up throughout the City of Echoes, including a case of thirty-two egg-shaped devices to be worn as pendants. The College's top minds, having brainstormed in secret for weeks on what the machine could have meant, finally hatched a plan: to bring together thirty-two contestants with hearts full of desire to fight and lay claim to one another's souls, so that the winner might find out for them what this 'wishing machine' could really do.
Welcome to the Crucible
In summary, the Crucible is a tournament being held by a creepy college investigating the goings-on in an abandoned city. The premise revolves around the use of items discovered in the city known as phylacteries. These pendants, when worn and activated, synchronize themselves to the soul of the wearer. When a competitor is defeated, the soul of the loser is transmitted to and stored in the phylactery of the winner, and the grand winner of the tournament -having amassed the souls of every other competitor- will have the chance to use the Machine to grant his or her wish.
The characters themselves are pivotal parts of this RP. The title says multiversal, but do take note of the quotation marks. In this story, you may make your own character or any character you've previously created, ever, from any universe. You could have a character from the world of any game, movie, book, or whatever, including pre-existing RPs (this is your chance to revive an old character you liked from an RP that died). However, this character does have to be your original creation. There's one other way in which your character is important: in the sheet, there's a section called 'Echo' which will be explained in the sheet, that in essence I will use to create a zone in the ever-changing City of Echoes with personal significance to your character. I hope that you will be able to enjoy the extreme freedom you have in creating your character to the fullest. You could have a human, a dwarf, a robot, a golem, an animal, anything, from any era, whatever you please.
However, this does not mean that things will be entirely character-driven. When you begin, your character will be randomly placed in an area in the City of Echoes along with a randomly chosen opponent. You won't need to get to fighting immediately; there will be a lot to explore and do. The maximum amount of players in this RP is 16, and every player can have two characters. However, one character will have to be designated as your main character, and the other (if you make one) as a side character. Side characters will become NPCs, and in the first round of the tournament, every player will fight an NPC. After that, it's PvP. College officials will be in the city to make sure that matches proceed in a proper tournament fashion; the first person to win a duel won't be able to fight again until there's another winner so that a 'Round 2' match can begin, for instance.
The other big thing to note about this RP is the manner in which PvP will be going down. My own experience with PvP across many roleplays hasn't been great. Some people, wanting to avoid things like unsightly wounds or consequences for their mistakes, don't let their character get hit. Others autohit. Some fights progress terribly slowly, with every little thing requiring input from both parties. All of these are problems that I hope to solve with my system.
The Combat
When two players get into a fight, here's how it's going to go down. Each person will write a couple paragraphs about the fight, including the scenery, the interactions, the actual battle, and so on. This includes taking control of the other character. Essentially, each side makes their own version of how a section of fight goes down. Once each person posts their version of a part of the battle, all players (including the fighting players) will get the chance to vote on which one they like more using the Like feature. The suggested criteria include quality of writing, coolness factor, handling of the opposing character, and overall flow. After an amount of time agreed to before the battle, the votes are tallied, and the winning version becomes canon, with the losing portion being edited into a hider. Then the next stage of the battle begins, with both players playing off what became canon, but the next portion could go either way. The first to three rounds won is the overall winner of the fight, with that player's third round deciding the battle. If players feel like they want to go on longer, the amount of rounds needed to win can be changed. In terms of voting, I am able to jump in and make a decision if I feel foul play is going on. So write well, write fairly, and judge fairly.
I mentioned before that defeating an opponent wins their soul, but the truth is a little different. To get the opponent's soul, the easiest and fastest way is to kill the opponent. After the loser dies, his or her soul is immediately stored in the winner's phylactery. However, a soul can be 'extracted' from an opponent by linking two phylacteries—one is 'plugged in' to the other, and the one that's doing the plugging is the one that gets the soul. Soul extraction, unfortunately, causes a lot of pain to the loser, and after the loser's soul is taken, the loser becomes the winner's ally, unable to view the winner as an enemy and is more inclined to do what the winner commands. Death is a real possibility in this game for your character, but if you are so inclined, there are ways you can be revived, or you can make another character who can enter the city as a 'spectator'. There's lots to do in the City of Echoes even if you've lost the tournament, such as find special Artifacts that the College found that will help your character (or an ally) fight, survive, or discover the place's secrets
One last thing: the phylactery has one other function. If the wearer is in a high emotional state, usually from despair, grief, or anger, it is capable of transforming the wearer into a monstrous form if the wearer loses control. The means of transformation and the resulting form varies immensely between wearers, but all transformations result in more power and a 'bloodlusted', insane state of mind, though the severity of the insanity can also vary. This frenzy can only be naturally reverted by taking another contestant's soul. If a frenzied competitor loses their soul but doesn't die, that competitor 'shrivels' down into a weakened and pitiful but still monstrous state, regaining some sanity but not all. If your character has a transformation ability already, that ability will be locked for use with this mechanic
Rules
1. Courtesy – treat your fellow players, and their characters, with respect. If there's some kind of problem, try and sort it out in a rational manner, and don't hesitate to approach me. Don't make a mockery of other peoples' characters; play them in a manner that would make the other player proud
2. Integrity – don't try to cheat the system, whether by persuading people to vote in a certain way using spurious means, or create problems by changing a vote at the last second or after a match has been decided. Don't add powers to your character that weren't made clear in your sheet
3. Perseverance - posting every few days is highly encouraged, especially when you're interacting with somebody else. Try not to make people wait; getting involved in an RP like this is a responsibility in its own right. If you need absence, tell me rather than simply remaining silent and leaving me to wonder what happened. If you don't like the way something is going, talk to me rather than dropping out. If two weeks pass without a post, I will notify you of the beginning of a three-day probation, after which you will be kicked for inactivity--unless you have a really good excuse. Sorry, but that's the way it has to be
4. Self-control – no usage of outside information IC. For instance, when your character gains an artifact, I'll give you its description IC to add to your inventory, but even though you know what it does, your character has to find out. No godmodding outside of special combat
5. Indomitable spirit – this is a competition, and you're here to win! Write your best, go for the goal, and if you're beaten, accept loss gracefully. The better your behavior, the likelier it is for something special to come your way—for instance, your beloved character, slain in a fight, may be brought back to life
Character Sheet
Don't forget: you can make both a main character and an NPC character. Depending on how many NPC characters there are, I may allow more than one per character, but keep in mind that chances are you won't be able to play them. The player cap is 16, and the NPC count is 16 as well. If you are inclined, you can also create 'guest NPCs' which may appear in the city as companions, quest-givers, or whatever. In this case, there will never be a Frenzy section, and delete whatever sections you don't use
The City of Echoes
A vast metropolis that's been around for over three thousand years, standing as one of the world's most cultural, industrial, and beautiful cities, but today it stands silent. Not even its true name remains. Its streets are inexplicably empty, save for the contestants who hope to win the Crucible and gain their wish, and for certain other parties shrouded in mystery. At the simplest level, it can be broken into two overarching zones: uptown and downtown.
Uptown
Spread out, laid back, and with more of a focus on the finer things in life, Uptown is the place to look for the City of Echoes' history, nature, art, and mid-to-high-class housing. It presents a smorgasbord of fascinating locals to live in, work in, visit, or all three. A seemingly disproportionate amount of its space is dedicated to the Park, a refuge of the untamed unknown within the massive city
Zones
Downtown
The true heart of the City of Echoes. This is the 'inner city', its center stuffed with towering highrises, and between them like a vast maze of concrete and steel run the avenues. In its heyday, the city's downtown was a constant, frenetic rush of activity, the hustle and bustle of people scrambling to live their everyday lives making some desensitized to humanity. Crime ran more rampant here than elsewhere, and even with the people gone, it remains a treacherous and confusing place.
Zones
Discovered items
1x Like
