Five years ago, the armies of the Witch Queen came to Old Ravian. By the end of the first year of her campaign, the entire southern third of the territory once held by the great Ravian Empire of old was in her hands by conquest or surrender. By the end of the second, she had swallowed almost all of it. Now, only a few mountain holdouts in the form of Rebel Dwarves, the mighty fortresses of the Kingdom of Plerezanta and the Trallin March remain free of her grasp. Her army of trolls, orcs and conscripts from her conquored and 'allied' territories close in on the first two, but the Trallin March... a scrap of swamps and wasteland filled with bandits and oucasts, holds no value for her.

The Sareltine clan of bandits has plagued the Kingdom of Liaric for generations, hitting merchants, raiding small towns, sacking villiages... and fleeing back into the March to evade the King's forces, ambushing or even just letting the environment to their killing for them. But the rise of the Witch Queen has ruined that for them, and perhaps all other clans - for her greater armies have made raiding nearly impossible.

But when the Sareltine clan ambushes a band of travellers from Liaric, their leader finds that what they ambushed was the the Princess of Liaric and her bodyguard, fleeing in the aftermath of Liaric's surrender to the Witch Queen. The Princess promises the leader of the Sareltine's money, land and titles if he can escort her safely to the Sayana Empire on the far end of the March, home of the elves and their mighty magics. With their help, the Witch Queen can be fought... but unity among the bandits is a fragile thing, and the Witch Queen will stop at nothing to prevent the Elves from entering the war before she's ready for them.

So in this one, you play the leader of the Sareltine bandits, male or female, and my character is the princess. Its a story of political alliances, grand war and eventually, the retaking of Liaric and the other conquered lands... or perhaps the utter failure of that effort. The story assumes you take her up on her deal, but technically, you could turn her into the Witch Queen and we could take the story that way, though that might get a little dark and undermine the romantic premise of the Princess and the bandit leader getting together.

Not every vampire is a predator, treating humanity as merely a meal, merely something to play with. Some regard the humans that they live among and feed upon as their flock, whom they must protect from supernatural predators - vampire or otherwise - in recompense for feeding on them to survive. Called Shepherds, these vampires never kill humans, but instead feeding a little on many humans more often, erasing their meal's memory of the event and moving on. Even when they protect their flock from purely human predators, they do not kill, unless they have no choice.

But there are those vampires who not only regard humans as merely food, merely playthings, but who revel in the kill, who only restrain themselves from mass murder out of the risk of outing vampires to the world at large. And it is one of these vampires, a notorious murderess named Rebecca Fernandez, who has recently arrived in the city you call home - and even more, seems to have set her sights on the neighborhoods you've placed under your protection. Local vampires know, after many lessons over the decades, to leave the humans in your territory alone...

But Rebecca doesn't seem to care about that one bit. And the band of vampire hunters that come, tracking her bloody trail of corpses, don't seem to care about the distinction between you and her at all.

So as the premise suggests, your character is a 'Shepherd' vampire, one that protects her human flock from supernatural predators, and my character is Rebecca, a vampire with zero regard for human life. Events force the two of you, after much confrontations (and Rebecca flirting with your character even while they fight), to work together against the vampire hunters that come after you both, and potentially other threats down the line.

The idea is slow-burn enemies to lovers, as Rebecca is forced to stop killing people because you're working together and, as her interest in your character moves from simple attraction to something more, to try and be more appealing to your character. Though, if you want it to be initially a lot more of a hatesex sort of thing at first or take it a different route, the burn doesn't have to be that slow. Up to how we play it.

You never asked to be Queen. You joined the rebellion against the tyrannical king Syrokis, joining so many others in lending sword or bow or spell to the effort. You were an accomplished and famed hero already and soon you rose up the ranks, a leader of the rebellion. Over the course of three years, a coalition from all corners of the Kingdom of Halrun finally captured the capital city of Eridia and overthrew Syrokis.

But with Syrokis's infant son spirited away by Loyalists during the capture of the city, and no other members of the dynasty on hand, a new monarch had to be selected. Various names were raised and rejected by the great men and women of the realm - nobles, generals, ranking clergy, powerful wizards, merchants and even a few peasant leaders. This man had too many enemies, this woman had no spine for it. This woman was too old to lead for long, this man was promising but his children were non-starters. The list was endless.

Finally, you were settled on as a compromise candidate. Popular, few enemies, just and good, more or less, smart enough to not be easily led, but wise enough to know to seek the advice of experts and your court when needed. You had no noble blood, no claim to the throne, but you were crowned anyway. Maybe you were just ambitious enough for it, or did it to prevent Halrun from falling into chaos when no better choice could be found, or because you feared the Estates General wouldn't let you refuse their offer.

But now... you're queen. A Queen of a bankrupt country, with many farms in ruins, an army that lost half its manpower and is now being staffed with former rebels and militiamen. With powerful factions all pressing demands on you for concessions, for political deals... for marriage alliances. The new Queen must secure her dynasty, and that will mean a marriage and children... and soon. For one does not destroy a two-hundred and fifty year old Dynasty and not expect that loss of legitimacy to hurt your chances of staying in power.

So, in this one, your character is the Queen, a former adventurer/heroine who has been raised to the Throne. You must navigate the corridiors of power or see yourself killed and overthrown as more people begin to ask 'If she can be Queen why not me?' My character is whatever marriage option your character ends up picking, in terms of alliance - in this universe, there are ways of two women (or two men, though that's immaterial to this rp) magically conceiving a child in one of them and same-sex relationships hold no stigma, hence why it can be FxF or MxF. You may end up meeting all the leading marriage prospects before picking the one that becomes 'my' character for good. Or we might just discuss the various characters I have written for the suitors and we can pick the one you want and go from there.

A thousand years ago, the world ended.

In the midst of plague and civil war that was consuming the continent of Kaylorin, barbarians took advantage of the chaos and poured out of the jungles, deserts and mountains, out of the wild untamed lands beyond the borders of the Civilized Kingdoms. Over the course of a decade, city after city, castle after castle fell to these invaders - weak and depopulated as they were, they fell quickly. People constantly fled towards the great trading cities of the coast, but even then, those fell under seiege. In the last days of the Great Fall, thousands of ships set sail for an only partially explored archipelago, a chain of islands that had proven to be rich in resources from early surveys, but that was all.

For some time, refugees continued to arrive, but eventually, fear of the plagues ravaging Kaylorin saw the incoming ships sunk as often as accepted, and eventually, they stopped coming. Over the next hundred years, the refugees, which had had many of the craftsmen and philosophers that had fueled the wealth of the coastal cities, formed into twelve city-states collectively called 'The Dodecopolis'. Continued exploration of the seas found more islands, which soon saw colonies planted by the cities of the Dodecopolis, and discovery of the continent of Nahkriin, ruled by large empires fueled by slave-run plantations and brutal mining practices. But the discovery of those empires and the ensuing trade of raw materials for fine crafts saw a golden age of science and art and infrastructure. The city-states would clash in small wars for control of colonies and trade routes and influence in the ports of Nahkriin, but it was all at a remove for most citizens. But Kaylorin remained taboo - any who went there were never allowed to come back for continued fear of the plague, and few ships that ever sailed to the continent were ever seen again anyway.

Sixty-seven years ago, the first steam-based devices were created, and soon, new weapons were created, ships that could sail the skies, and in time, new medicines that dampened the fears of most about plague and disease... and people's eyes turned to their homeland, to Kaylorin. Armed with these new weapons, these airships, and advanced medicines, perhaps Kaylorin could be reclaimed, perhaps artifacts from before the Great Fall could be recovered...

In the first truly unified undertaking by the whole of the Dodecopolis, hundreds of skyships were loaded with supplies and people, and sent back to Kaylorin, using old maps to find strategically placed mountains to set up waystations and fortresses on, where airships could stop before continuing on to wherever they aimed to go. And then the exploration and exploitation of Kaylorin began.

It was soon found that the beginnings of civilization had returned - the castles and cities reoccupied, partially repaired. New fortified townships settled. Small petty kingdoms. But many other ruins were still ruins, and disease still ravaged the land freely. But the price commanded for Kaylorin artifacts makes such expeditions and the cost in lives, men and money (the medicine exists, but is far from cheap or perfect) worth it to many... and over time, as the unity of the Dodecopolis fractured, rivalry between the cities struck once more. Piracy and Privateers began to raid the skyways, but still, there was enough profit to be had that people kept going.

But no one ever seeks to stay on the mainland for long, outside of the well-defended fortresses and outposts in the mountains. No airship lands for long outside of those safe spaces.

For so much is unexplored, for so much is Kaylorin still feared, the dark recesses of that continent still loom large in the imagination of the people of the Dodecopolis.

So in this rp, the notional premise is that one of the characters is the captain of a merchant skyship of somesort, or maybe a privateer, and the other is a regular pirate captain. You can play whichever one you want and I'll play the other. During a battle, after the Pirates have boarded the other ship, both ships become damaged enough to fall together towards the ground, in a mostly unexplored forested region of the continent, far from any if the mountain-waystations, and the two crews and captains must work together to survive the dangers of Kaylorin and travel to one of the waystations if they ever want to make it home again.

Being part of the wealthiest 1% in North America has a lot of benefits - the kinds of benefits that make eccentricities look charming and genteel, rather than crazy. But even by your eccentric family's standards, your Uncle Julian selling his share of the family's many assets and buying a castle on a small island off the eastern cast of Scotland stands out. Apart from the occasional visit back to the states - at least until you were twelve, when your parents and your Uncle had a fight (the details of which your parents have always refused to tell you), your Uncle lived there, in that castle, doing... god knows what. He always told stories of his travels all over the world, though, adventures that seemed equal parts fantastical and unlikely, but always rang true with you as a child - even if they do less so now.

A few days after your 21st birthday, you get a letter from your Uncle's lawyers - your uncle has passed, and left the vast bulk of his estate, some 750 Million dollars in cash and various stocks and bonds, as well as extensive artwork and his castle, to you. The terms of the will are simple - attend his funeral, held at the castle, and sign a legally binding contract to not sell the castle for at least one year following the end of the funeral. And to not allow your parents onto the island at any point during that year.

Unfortunately for you, your Uncle's death wasn't natural - he was murdered. Neck-deep in a world of magic, mystery and powerful artifacts, your Uncle had many friends, and many enemies, and all have been invited to his funeral. With the help of your uncle's ward (and apprentice), a young woman named Lena you must navigate the new world you've been thrust into, and learn why your uncle left you his castle, and the secret he left for you there.

It would help if Lena wasn't so resentful of you inheriting almost everything from Uncle Julian, though.

So as the premise lays out, I play Lena, your character's apprentice/ward, the child of one your uncle's allies who died years ago and raised by him since. The action would, at first, stay largely centered on the castle, as you discover just what you've been dragged into, and meet the men and women that fought with and against your Uncle for power and influence in the hidden world of magic and mystery.

In the world of superheroes and supervillains, it's not unknown for a hero to fall, nor is it unknown for a villain to rise, to try to redeem themselves. It doesn't happen all the time, but it does, sometimes. Enough to be a thing that every superhero and super villain, every civilian has heard about. Some superheroes even try to exploit it, try to redeem those villains they think can be redeemed. Others find the idea disgusting - villains deserve death or prison, not a second chance. Often, it never goes anywhere. But what greater victory is there, but to turn an enemy into an ally? And of course, for many heroes, saving people, even villains, is what they do.

And the same holds true in reverse - some villains try to tempt or corrupt their opponents, hoping to gain an ally or minion. Of course, evil being what it is, it just as often leads to them having a new, evil rival, if they succeed in their corruption. Or just being hoist on their own petard. But sometimes it does work.

And it works often enough that you are going to try it. Despite the risks - personal and otherwise.

You're evil - you're a supervillain. Be it through powers or sheer determination and training or through dizzying intellect, you've gone toe to toe with many superheroes in your city. You've never been caught and thrown in prison, for all that you've been thwarted many times - but you've also carried the day more than once. As supervillains go, you're pretty successful, all said and done. And you enjoy it - the power, the challenge, the danger, the very acts of your villainy. Sure, you have limits and lines, you're not some psychotic who butchers children or the like, but still. You're evil, and you revel in it.

Which is why it troubles you so much that you have a crush on one of the superheroines in your city. One who has thwarted you more often than others, one you've only but rarely succeeded agains. She's vexed you for several years now, and while it initially disgusted you to realize it... you have a crush. One you can't seem to shake. It might even be an obsession. You want this woman, you want her for your own - but you don't want to just... take her prisoner (if you even could) and turn her into some sort of slave or toy. Not really.

You want her to feel the same towards you as you do (again, a disturbing realization). When a villain falls for a hero - also not unknown among the thousands of heroes and villains with powers that dot the world - all too often, it means redemption. After all, to get a hero to accept a villain, the villain often has to stop their villainous ways. And to get acceptance from society at large, so you don't have to fight other heroes and the law... they often then proceed to help their hero. It's not a simple process, despite the simple narrative, but it's something that's happened.

But you don't want that. You *like* being evil, and you have no intention of being forced to help all the little people. So you decide to try and make your crush, your obsession, this superheroine who, while not self-righteous about it, is a paragon of good morality in many ways, fall. To corrupt her. It's been done before... all you need to do is get close to her, twist her moral compass, seduce her, both literally and metaphorically, convince her that perhaps you might have the right idea. Raise doubts. And what better way to do begin, to earn her trust than to, slowly - you have to be careful about it, so she doesn't think you're up to something - convince her that you might just be someone redeemable?

So as the premise suggests, this is superhero genre, with Your char being a supervillain of some sort, and mine being a superheroine. I didn't name my character because I want to pick a power/style (and from thence, a superhero name and persona and so on) that complements/opposes in a suitably thematic way, the one you pick from your char. But My superheroine character is a pretty straightforwardly good, usually nice kind of super, not a dark or broody one (doesn't really work for this premise), idealistic and well intentioned, really big on the whole 'saving the world' thing. Considers any life saved or any person helped worth the effort. She's not as two dimensional as she sounds here, because all this is her super persona, but that's a big part of her.

In some ways, despite the dark theming, this is almost a little tongue-in-cheek in regards to genre savvy character treatment of the superhero genre. But it is also dark, or at least, quite potentially dark, as your character is trying to corrupt the object of their affection, which will require at least somewhat earning their trust - and in turn, My character, the superheroine, will think you're an excellent candidate for redemption once you start trying to earn her trust and she actually believes you're not up to something (which she does, at first). Essentially, its a bit of a game to see who changes who first, or do they end up somewhere in the middle?

Prophecy.

A dangerous tool. A powerful weapon. A foolish waste.

It has been all these and more. Vague words written on ancient scrolls, whispers from mad oracles, and strange signs interpreted by the crazed loners of the world. Entire kingdoms have fought because a prophecy led people to make the decisions that caused the war, and entire Kingdoms have fought because a prophecy was ignored.

Prophecies always come true, but not always in the way you expect them to. The more vision of the future one gets, the more insane one gets, over time. To see the future, in all the ways it could go, is to open your mind far more than the mortal mind can be.

The Oracles of Variella are an ancient order of oracles, gifted their powers by the Goddess Variella, the font of all wisdom and magic, or so say her followers. Regardless, the Oracles have served many kings and Emperors over the years, providing them with knowledge of the future, be they so brave enough to seek it, wise enough to understand it, and clever enough to use that knowledge to the best effect. Too many, of course, try to avert their fate too openly, and so cause their undoing in the very way they sought to stop it.

The Oracles rarely leave their temple, high in the Arkosan Mountains, but now... now one has to. A young oracle, new to her power, still mostly in control of her faculties, must be sent out. One of the Lost Books of the Caresti, the greatest seer of the the Oracles of Variella, has surfaced in the distant city of Canderos, a haven for criminals, black magic, pirates and other scum of the earth. No one but an Oracle may handle the book, and so, this young woman has been sent to recover it.

Of course, she cannot go alone. A Knight has been tasked to guard her. Be they a holy Paladin on a mission for the gods, or barely above a mercenary, they are tasked with guarding this oracle. But many forces want this book, for the prophecies it contain have the power to bring the order of the world crashing down. And some of those forces will do anything to make sure the Oracle and her guardian do not get to Canderos alive.

So, as the premise lays out, my character is an Oracle, and yours is the Knight tasked with her protection. You could be a paladin, a Knight sworn to a king sent to help the Oracles as a favor to them from your King, a mercenary that just happens to have a horse and heavy armor and gets called a Knight, or anything else in between.

In this verse, as Oracles get older and more powerful, they get more specific visions further in the future, but they also grow less and less in touch with reality. My character is thus generally only going to get vague visions of the new future, because she's young, only 20, and only had her powers for a short time. But she's also mostly sane. Hence her being sent on this mission. And of course, shenanigans ensue when other people want the book, and, in theory, romance between our characters is to happen as they cross the continent and face all these harrowing adventures together.

It has been over seven thousand years since humanity first left the Sol System. In that time, the Children of Earth have spread far and wide across the hyperlanes - the bridges of subspace that connect specific disparate systems - and in that time, humanity has united and collapsed again and again. The First Empire fell to plague and civil war, the Second to extragalactic invasion and internal structural weakness. After each fall, so much knowledge and history was lost - the history of Old Earth is scattered and half-forgotten in places, muddled and confused in others. And when the hyperlanes shifted after the fall of the First Empire, the Sol System was lost entirely, the cradle of human civilization, lost forever. Or so it seemed.

Over the millennia, the Children of Earth have genetically altered themselves into dozens of families - some, like the psychic, hairless, blue or purple skinned Psilons or the long-lived Elvhen are very common, across countless worlds, others were specifically attempted to one world or another.

A hundred years ago, after a century and a half of war and politics, the Psilons of the planet Vanerra unified the Many Children of Earth into the Third Empire, under the Tychos Dynasty. Ruling with a relatively light hand, but with messianic zeal, the new Imperial Regime has brought in a golden age for the Known Galaxy. The ancient Jump Drive, First Empire technology that allows ships to travel free of the restrictions of the Hyperlanes, has been rediscovered and put into place.

And now, reports come in from the frontier that after a jump-accident, a cargo ship found the Alpha Centauri System - and if Alpha Centauri has been found, then Lost Sol has been found. Earth was turned to nuclear ash long ago, but Mars, Io, Europa, Pluto - each had had colonies. Those colonies may be long dead, or they may still have people there, but either way, the Empress Ashal III knows that to find Sol once more, to reclaim the home of humanity, would shore up her dynasty's claim to the throne like nothing else.

She has dispatched her grandniece, Essentia, to lead an expedition to the jump-coordinates of Alpha Centauri, and from there, to Sol. And to join her, the Imperial Throne has hired a bevy of experts - including one linguist and historian, an expert on the languages of Old Earth - Spanish, Chinese, Latin, Russian, Hindi and more. And on the history of the Sol System. Over the centuries, language has shifted and even English would be incomprehensible to the standard Imperial Citizen. the expertise of this linguist and historian would be critical, for any living humans found, or for any study of their remnants.

Okay, so as the description implies, my character is Essentia, the Empress's grandniece, and your character is the linguist/historian/person, although we can change the roles around, if you really want. The Setting is pretty soft SF, all things said and done, with all kinds of crazy tech, though it's not a free-for all. Even with hyperdrives and jumpdrives, space travel takes time, and this isn't an entirely post-scarcity society or the like. You wouldn't have to play a human, or any of the preset races I know of, just a subrace of humanity - appearance may be somewhat off, but your ancestors were from Earth, but they could have genetically altered themselves in some way or another.

The Rp would center on the trip to the Lost Sol system, and then what we find there, and all that.

No one ever really expects it to happen to them.

You've read or watched all sorts of fiction about people from the modern world suddenly being zapped into some fantastical world, and then finding out they're the chosen one or something along those lines. Or they use their own knowledge of the modern world's science and technology to start some sort of industrial revolution or at least improve the technology. Absurd, silly, cliche, absolutely. But still, it's fun.

But still, it was all fiction. Safe. Sure, your life was pretty boring, the daily humdrum of modern existence - school or a job or whatever it was that filled your days. But still - it couldn't happen, and even if it could... here on Earth, you've got the internet and indoor plumbing and modern medicine and electricity.

In hindsight, your fate was probably sealed when you walked into that antique shop to get a present for your grandmother's 85th birthday. What were you even thinking? That's always how it starts...

One minute, you were picking up an antique, carefully, looking for the small sticker on it that would tell you the price in hard to read loopy handwriting...

The next minute, you're in the middle of an old-growth forest - and soon being arrested by the Queen's soldiers for the crime of being yet another "Otherworld Intruder". For the world you've found yourself in has had quite a few people from Earth get sent there over the centuries, and many have upset the established order they found when they got there. So, nowadays every time someone from Earth shows up - the Establishment likes to get a handle on the situation immediately.

Now, you're a political football between warring factions of a brewing rebellion and a Queen determined to hold onto her power at all costs.

Oh, and did I mention you can do magic now?

Yeah, you can do magic.

Okay, so this idea is meant to be a somewhat light-hearted, or at least not super-serious play on the Isekai/Portal Fantasy genre, where someone from the modern world gets magically zapped into another world, usually fantastical, sometimes even based on a work of fiction the main character is a fan of, etc. I'm really hoping to embrace the absurdities of the genre here, to a great extent, so don't look too hard for realism either - a little, sure, but not too much.

Your character is someone from modern earth that likes those sorts of stories, and then finds themselves in the Main Character's position of one of those stories, complete with magical powers and a lot of groups wanting a piece of you.

"My character" would be any number of people you meet, and there'd be a number that are potential LIs, as it were - this can be MxF or FxF, and I'm willing to play the M or the F in an MxF.