Prologue
Paris, 2024
With the Summer Olympics over the horizon, the residents of Paris were abuzz with excitement. There was nothing to be said, really; hosting the Games always brought with it a large amount of national pride. Here, their grand city was on display for the world to see (as if it wasn’t famous enough), and shopkeepers were already preparing for the surge of tourists that would come once the reasons turned and the weather grew warmer.
Such a thing would be put on hold, however, as it made its presence known. A giant tear in what seemed to be the fabric of space-time, a Rift, opened up in front of the Eiffel Tower, The chaos that it caused—from both the nation’s citizens and from the world at large—was only a small taste of what was to come. As soon as that Rift appeared, more appeared all over the world—from Beijing to Los Angeles, Sao Paolo to Seoul, more and more of these Rifts seemed to pop up.
The international panic over these Rifts—about what they held within, about what could have caused their formation, and how to calm the hearts of the nation’s people—soon turned into a coalition formed by the UN, who sent the first squadron straight into the first Rift that had appeared in Paris. Upon their return, that team brought with them news of what seemed to be a realm of untapped natural resources, of danger that had only been seen within the realm of fantasy—and powers that could only have been gained in the world of fiction.
Attributes, they called them; while few members of the squadron had gained them, those who had were able to combat that which was beyond the Rift without the need for modern weaponry. There were a few who dubbed this ‘magic’, and rightfully so—though somewhat limited in scope, those with an Attribute were able to go well and beyond what any normal was capable of doing.
This revelation immediately preceded a shift in policy the world over—governments quickly formed their own teams to send into Rifts, and within a matter of days, found out far more about the Rifts. A few linked between nations, for example, while others led to locations vastly different from that which had been reported from the first Rift—closed systems whose only entrance and exit were the portal of light from which they had came. Others still held items or other such materials whose existences so defied the laws of nature that the scientific community was in an uproar.
It has been ten years since then, and the exploration of Rifts has thus been handed over to the people instead. While the governments of each nation still control who has access to a Rift (going so far as to sell the rights to non-international ones to corporations who specialize in the exploration thereof), the sudden influx of worldwide changes led to the rapid escalation in globalization, and exploring the new Rifts that appear and disappear with each passing day has become a viable alternative to the standard job market. With the number of people with Attributes growing ever so slowly in number and the increase of need to obtain things from these Rifts, it does indeed seem like the path of the world thus is set for the years to come.
Attributes
Attributes, in short, are traits bestowed upon people who have ventured into a non-transportation Rift. They appear very rarely among the populace, and generally come in three varieties. In descending order of power (and increasing rarity), they are: item attributes, elemental attributes, and conceptual attributes. Item attributes are straightforward: they either allow the given item to manifest, or to strengthen a copy of it that may exist within the confines of reality already. Elemental attributes (water, fire, etc. ;) allow for the manipulation and creation of whatever they represent, the degree to which is determined by the strength of the user. Conceptual attributes imbue the ‘idea’ of something onto the user or something that they wield; for example, an attribute of ‘magnetism’ could allow a person to repel or attract metal objects, while something like ‘wound’ could potentially transfer or remove wounds from one location to another.
In all three cases, the strength of an Attribute’s usage is determined by a combination of both the strength and of the ingenuity of the Attribute holder and their ability to use their skills creatively. Not all Attributes are created equal, of course, and their existence is valuable to the point where companies actively try and headhunt for Attribute users as early as high school well into late college (with a few going so far as to encourage people to drop out of higher education outright).
Alright, so... Here's my latest weird idea. Taking cues from series like A Returner's Magic Should Not Be Special, Solo Leveling, and Hardcore Leveling Warrior, I've come up with this mishmash of an idea. In short, you are a person who explores these Rifts, employed or freelance (or somewhere in between, maybe?), and your goal is to go through and explore around for the sake of... Well, whatever it is driving you forward, really. The story itself would, ideally, span the globe; consider the idea of jumping from one continent to another between missions as something that might happen every so often. Players, ideally, would start in a major city (I’ll leave that up to a majority vote or shove them somewhere made-up if need be) and work from there. I won’t push for any specific groups to form up, though, so if you want a party of people having just met up online Durarara!! style, feel free to do so. Questions? Concerns? As usual, just bring them up and I’ll do my best to answer. In any case: form!
