@Mercenary Lord
Crazy thing about to happen. Just need people to react to the clones and maybe the gunshots if they like. Then things happen.

...nothing about the big explosions that suddenly appeared?

should i start tagging people in my posts? these past few posts i've felt like nobody's really reacted to anything I've done; granted its not like I've done a whole lot, but it does feel a little futile to write and be ignored. would tagging help wit that, or do i just have to write more interesting posts?

@Mercenary Lord
I think it's more because of the amount going on atm.

I forgot about it because it didn't actually register till that connect that Bombard was showing up too.

Yeah, I can start tagging if that would help too

especially since bombard is about 1000x more noticeable than Phantom most of the time

@Mercenary Lord
Why don't you go ahead and update with him making an actual entrance?

I really will, but tomorrow is 2 exams in one day and im already a bit behind on my bedtime. I'll get something up as soon as I can

who's making the entrance, by the way?

We're just waiting for @thehangedman before we move on with a bit of a cut scene finally introducing our main villain. Then we have things happen.

Well, that's an instakill on Emblem, I guess. I suppose the universe forgot about the existence of his forcefield, or the fact that killing characters like that is a dick move.

What the f*ck, guys?

Yeah, I was kind of surprised at how casually you just killed off Emblem too, but I had assumed that you had at least made sure it was okay to do that before actually doing it.

It may have been to showcase how devastatingly powerful this guy is? Dunno, I think also it came across as not so much a character as an NPC, etc etc

@thewizardguy
NPCs. Not characters.
Forcefield that can withstand, as you said, 1 ton of force (which isn't exactly logical, pressure would be better. But it's whatever) That crush was well beyond his limit.

I mean, hell, I killed my own secondary character because it was a horrible match up and Smog was playing for keeps. A dick move is killing PCs without any form of advance warning or discussion. Or removing your entire, un-sheeted NPC minions with a magic wave of my hand.

These villains are serious. There is massive plot stuff going on throughout everything with the Alkahest to open up the RP away from Reg and I steering everything. Give the players proper interaction without relying on some plot bullshit.

Jack can recreate the rune sets onto another fairly easily, to boot. Give them real training. Put them into a certain group that will be forming soon as spies. You have legitimate options available to you, and losing an NPC does not stop that.

Also, thank you Mercenary Lord, for understanding part of the basics behind it.

@Old Amsterdam

I think due to the nature of Jack's powers, wizard guy took over emblem and the others as sort of surrogate characters so he can remain involved. Like with them dead, how can he remain involved in the main action, etc

I can understand the reasonings behind both sides, as you want to show the power but wizard wants to remain involved, etc

I do think some warning would have been appreciated so he could have planned for other options

@Old Amsterdam

Great, so you're setting up villains nobody can beat. But that still doesn't mean you get to swat characters out of the air like that. Especially when I had agreed with Regitnui that Emblem would be leaving crippled, but I could bring him back later. Killing him off without even informing me in advance is a dick move, and I don't appreciate it.

I don't care how powerful he is. There are a multitude of ways he or others in the area could have intervened. Dusk could have used a laser, Traveller could have used a teleport, he himself would be lashing out with Force, it's 1 ton power ripping holes in whatever was touching him. ESPECIALLY because he believes he's being assaulted by illusory nightmare monsters.

And no I can't just replace him. I specifically set up the Jack's powers so he can't shake supers out of his ass like christmas candy. Else he'd have an army of hundreds by now. Giving someone Emblem's level of power takes time and effort. And these guys had been training for weeks, as I had previously stated. I'm not going to get any more IC time than that, so anyone else I do manage to conscript and empower is going to be less good than that.

Sorry, but I'm pissed. You had no good reason to kill Emblem, and didn't even tell me in advance. That's a dick move.

@thewizardguy
Let's play this straight. Did I once say in my post he was killed? No. I say he was put into a ball being fed more and more material before the ball was compressed. Per Spectrum we know there's blood. No confirmation that he does die.

See, Sedj handled Magus incredibly well when we blinded him. He talked to both Reg and I together about it, I explained my thoughts and what I was looking for him to gain, and he considered it and went with it. Being aPC, he was given the choice.

You could have messaged us asking for clarification and information, seeing as you are viewing these NPCs in a much higher light. I would have admitted my original plan was indeed death, but I had another thought I wanted to see about doing. After being told you saw them as faux-PCs, I would even have apologized over the matter and worked exclusively on fixing the error in the next update. Because I wait to reply when angry, generally speaking, to avoid causing extra problems and unearned negative feelings, I rarely have an issue with a GM or fellow player when solving disagreements and misunderstandings. I am an incredibly understanding person, and have changed events in the past to better suit my players at the detriment of my plot.

Beyond that, you assume they're uneatable when:
Rend is worse for wear when fighting someone evenly powered to him.
Smog is detained from the injuries Lucky and Anomaly gave her.
Dian had her leg practically blown off because you assumed she had instant healing over minor burns to her skin. Which i let her leg get destroyed, because she could fix it with time.
Null is possibly the only one who could be considered unbeatable, and that's because she's a high level psychic who fucks with your mind, tapping your body into uselessness, while communicating in your head.

Barely any of these guys have had legitimate screen time besides introductions, and of course I'm going to showcase their strongest aspects when they get to show up. Of course I'm going to showcase the amazing team they are when the team (mostly) forms. Because that sets the stones for what I've been building. Or should we just give away every single plot point and big thing we're working towards?

I completely understand why the immediate thought was death. And I fully intended during writing that he dies. Because of this shit that constantly goes down instead of calm interactions over a perceived slight. Because he's an NPC.

But I left it vague enough I could bullshit him to life. Because I had a suspicion that you saw them as more than NPCs and I was willing to work things out.

But I gotta be honest, man, I'm pretty fucking pissed right now. I bust my ass every day at work, come home to shitty cell service that kills my ability to be active here, spend hours planning for RPs and posts and characters and my book I'm working on, while trying to make sure people can have fun and things can be worked around. All with increasingly deteriorating memory and therapy for all the dark shit I've survived.

And maybe it's just because it's text, and maybe I'm getting angry over misinterpreting your replies, but my understanding is stretched pretty thin at this moment.

@thewizardguy, this is the fourth time I'm asking: Please put Jack's sheet in the characters tab. Both Old Amsterdam and myself use it as reference. Right now, we're operating on assumptions and what we remember about Jack, not what he can actually do. I cannot go back 10 or so pages in this thread every single time I have to check on a character. Considering how creating heroes now seems to be his modus operandi, I'm surprised that he'd put time and effort into them without keeping a tighter leash or with a specific plan.

What I was assuming, and this is backed up by the lack of a character sheet I can reference, was that Jack would create "Epics" for purposes and as pawns. If he put so much investment into them, he'd keep them to be bodyguards, or have them "thwart" his villains or allies to keep other heroes off their backs, or have them infiltrate the retinues of the High (or other group) as spies. If you invest a lot of time and effort in raising a thoroughbred show dog, you don't leave it running the streets and potentially being injured or worse by feral dogs and leopards.

Also, I understand your fondness for Emblem and need to have characters who are involved in the action. Though you seem to forgetting you have a third. Or is Dusk the one you were willing to sacrifice? And I don't mean "kill", rather suffer at the hands of plot.

Jack and Team Epsilon are in the character tab, @Regitnui. wizardguy just put them on the same post as Guilt rather than make a whole new post for them.

@Sedjwickj And nobody tells me this stuff?! /ridiculous Thanks, guy. I couldn't find it and I wasn't getting much help from the poster.

@Old Amsterdam
He was covered in a ball, and it was then shrunk to a ball 5 inches in diameter.



Without the direct intervention of some powerful external being, he's very dead.

I did not mean to make any point about the beatability or lack thereof of your villains. In fact I severely doubt you would introduce a set of villains if there was no actual way of defeating them. I merely said something stupid in anger. As such I retract my statement, and apologise for having made it.

I did message both of you, actually. You ignored my PM and replied in the OOC, so I assumed you wanted to handle this in the OOC, for whatever reason.

I'm sure you're an incredibly reasonable and understanding person. But if you knew I valued Emblem more than the average NPC, why didn't you talk to me about it before killing them off? At least to tell me this might not be the instakill it so clearly resembles.

I don't know what your life is like, or what your wifi reception is like. And while I respect and appreciate fighting through circumstances in order to contribute to this rp, which despite everything I still enjoy, that does not make this magically not a dick move. Everyone makes missteps, even if you spend hours planning, and I do not expect you to be a superhumanly perfect GM/Co-GM. But I still don't enjoy it when one of those missteps kills off a character I was looking forward to running.

The reason I'm angry, by the way, is because this effectively throws Team Epsilon out the window. With both their leader and firebender out, I might as well toss the entire idea. That's hours and hours of prepared stories and ideas I wanted to try out, down the drain in the blink of an eye. Although, despite this, I may have reacted overly pissed, and do apologise if my words were too harsh at any point.

@Regitnui

I told you at the time, sorry if it wasn't clear enough.

I am willing to allow all of my characters to suffer at the hands of the plot. Inferno was wiped out and is currently near death, Emblem was crippled for life by Dian's attack. If the situation came to it, I would be happy to have Dusk suffer crippling defeats as well, as long as it made sense. I don't expect my characters to get into fights with the main villains and have them get out unscathed. Hell, if we talked about it, I would even have been fine with characters dying. Emblem dying through Martyr system while heroically fighting the Alkahest, for example, would be a great story to me. But just killing them off in five lines of text feels like my character has just been erased, they didn't even get to die in a cool way.

For future reference bombard is also in the same tab as phantom

@Mercenary Lord, Thanks. Best make sure that my personal stupidity doesn't get in the way again.

@thewizardguy
Now if that had been your first reply, obviously with slight changes given the extra discussion, this could've gone smoother.

You messaged me almost the exact same thing you posted, and as such I decided on OOC. Maybe not the strongest choice, sure, but I feel this was a discussion that might serve better in a public space.

Like I said, I understand why it would indicate he's dead. Why everyone would think so. Because by their eyes, how could he have survived? As I stated my original intention was death, so I made it look like death. It was after the post that I thought of the other possibility and the chance that you considered them more than NPCs.

So to avoid these misaligned conceptions of your people, I ask that you make minor CSs for anyone you don't consider immediately expendable. Those you want to use as faux-PCs really need a legitimate CS, even if it's not including backstory for example.

The reason I detailed my basic life was to hopefully give you understanding of why I was angry at the time, for the record.

So, now that both sides have had time to chill and think, I will yet again say this:

He can live, if that is what you'd like. I've been running a concept around in my head for a kind of reality warping person, and I could actually create them as an NPC to drop in. Or I could manage to have Alex overcome her panicking, overwhelmed by stimuli, state for the briefest of moments to save him right before it's too late.

And furthermore, as per the plan set in motion, There's going to be a certain someone who will be able to heal Emblem if you're keeping him alive.

I hope that finalizes everything, and if you wish to discuss the options for saving him, you can go ahead and PM both Reg and myself when you've got time and we'll work out the details and likely colab the events from there.