Thirty years ago they simply appeared, strange creatures made of shadow, all over the world. Anyone they touched simply changed, these shadow touched no longer cast shadows in any light and seem to lose that which made them human on some fundamental level. We call them the Soulless.

The mainlands are lost, dominated by ethereal shadow beasts and their legions of soulless humans. We survive because of two facts: the shadows fear bright lights and the Soulless don't work together like true humans. Now the survivors of humanity live on small islands, their coasts kept illuminated by great fires at night, some use electricity to power flood lights, but such technology was considered dead long before the shadows began to move. Great airships, once cargo haulers and passenger liners became flying cities. Safer than the islands as Shadows can't fly, but harder work to survive on.

For now, survival is all we can manage, for how can you kill monsters that you can't touch?

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The world of shadows is an apocalyptic steampunk setting some of my friends asked me to run. Currently there is no map or set list of nations so much is up for creation. That being said there are some key concepts of the world all must know:

-Mercureal: Often simply called 'merc' is a naturally occurring gas often found beneath great mountain ranges. While highly toxic and more than slightly flammable it is the substance on which the world ran before the shadows came to life, and is now the one thing keeping humanity alive. When combined with water at one part per thousand it dissolves into the water like salt. The merc treated water has a lower boiling point, vastly lowered transition state energy requirement and, most importantly, once turned to steam will not condense, regardless of temperature, so long as it is kept under pressure. When it finally does condense the water becomes normal with the merc seemingly replaced with a mildly toxic salt.

-Shadows: called many different names by different cultures, the shadows are an enigma. Generally inactive during the day they flee from bright lights, but don't seem injured by them. They pass through normal matter at will, ignoring walls, doors, bullets and explosions. There has never been a confirmed case of one being killed, and all attempts to contain one for study have similarly failed with spectacular results. Any human they touch becomes soulless, in fact this seems to be the only way they can interact directly with the world.

-Soulless: While appearing human on the outside, they are anything but. Most notably they do not cast shadows, this property has never been explained, though it has been studied. Soulless are capable of coherent speech, tool use, teamwork and even cultural persuits such as art or music, but they seem to decline to use any of these when left on their own. Groups of wild soulless act more like beasts than men, fighting for food, not using tools, failing to maintain their own health and appearance beyond basic needs and the like. Despite this, when challenged by untouched humans they will take up arms, pretend to be normal, even entreating others with promises and lies. Despite everything one things remains constant, the soulless always try to stop humanity from surviving. They pin down people so they can be touched or kill them, acting on some collective instinct. The change from human to soulless is instant, a marine who moments ago fighting to save his comrades will gladly turn his weapons on his friends the moment his soul is taken. Often they will try to hide their condition to infiltrate safe islands or airships where they can sabotage and kill.

-Technology: Due to the discovery of Mercureal this world has gone down a vastly different path from our own. Electricity is considered a technological dead end, used for lighting and creating sparks, but little else. Instead the world uses machinery powered by steam. Special tanks able to hold merc-steam under immense pressure are used as batteries or fuel. During the great war, which ended shortly before the shadows rose, great tanks were powered by these steam cells. Afterwards personal automobiles using the same tech were on the rise. Gunpowder does exist but is much harder to find due to the situation, most arms are steam weapons, using merc-steam to propel pellets at near supersonic velocities. Several steam guns are even able to break the sound barrier. While weaker than normal firearms, these steamarms are much cheaper to use and easier to find ammo for since any merc-boiler can recharge their tanks.

A discord is... coming soon^(TM). RP will be mostly on RPguild but the discord can be used for quick back and forth conversations that one player then posts allowing for in-depth conversations. I shall be the GM and control the NPCs running the airship the players find themselves on. Exact details are yet to be determined but the RP will likely follow a single airship that the players are notable members of and their struggle to survive in this broken world. Politics between different ships and the various safe islands as humans fight over supplies, drama between friends as people are pushed to their limits. I hope all of this will be central in this RP.

Update: Discord Get!

Interested! :-)

Can't join because of time restraints, but I just wanted to pop in to say that your world and concepts sound super cool! Good luck in your RP!

Interested, continuing character concept ideas.

Name: Keket, Belle of the Brawl

Age: 18

National Origin: Bright Coast Covenant

Appearance:
Her back is almost entirely covered by scarring from lashings she received. The scarring, due to a few missed lashings, also extends to her hips, thighs, and sides. When wearing her bands, they would be on her biceps and thighs to apply pressure on relatively sensitive areas.

Personality: While absolutely not religious, Keket adopted a particular form of self-restraint from the Bright Coast. The bands have dulled studs that apply pressure and have a latchlike device on top to further press the studs in to cause pain. The original intent of the bands was to purify sin by pain, but this serves to help Keket remember to keep her temper down. Her temper, after the events surrounding her leaving Bright Coast, has gone from nearly nonexistent to a seething fury at all times. Without her bands, she is prone to going into a pure rage upon the first enemy or agitator, becoming almost rapturously aggressive.

Outside of her rage, she is generally pretty pleasant to be around. She is far from meek and quite fiery. She does not attempt to insult others and instead compliments them. She does not intentionally make jokes that talk directly about a person. She prefers to make fun of a situation or the things that happen to people. She cannot read nor write anything more than her signature due to the oral tradition and lack of writing in her culture. However, she is very eloquent when speaking and was originally groomed to be a storyteller. So, she is very much observant and uses her ability to observe for gathering information. Information she gathers that she feels must be preserved will be woven into either a story or poem, left in her mind for future use.

Most of her motivations center upon herself. She wants to find a place to finally belong, one that will not mistreat her again. She wishes to find a better means to keep her temper under control. Most of all, however, she wants to become strong enough to crush those similar to her abusers.

Bio: Born among a religious sect that believed sin was cleansed by pain and the shadows were people who did not cleanse themselves, Keket grew up originally intended to become a lorekeeping storyteller like her father. The first 16 years of her life were spent learning the lore of the sect and the tenets. She spent almost all day learning lore and tenets, only having a couple hours to go outside when night came. She was careful to take a lantern and spent it mostly sitting under a tree at the center of the town. After she turned 16, she began to question the tenets of pain to cleanse. It was not unusual for children to privately question the sect at some point before adulthood, but Keket went further and began to publicly question the methods of cleansing and even the need for cleansing.

This heresy drew the attention of the inquisitorial branch of the sect, called the Order of the Soul. They quietly kidnapped her from her home and put her into interrogation chambers. Their interrogating found her guilty of heresy and attempting to incite a split among the religion. As her punishment, she was lashed in the cell for weeks, barely kept alive on minimal rations and water, and frequently belittled and screamed at by inquisitors. Due to the dehumanizing treatment, some of the inuisitors did as they willed with her, raping her multiple times during the punishments. The final part of her punishment was public execution by exposure and flogging. They started by a day of flogging her back, leaving large bleeding gashes and almost unbroken bruising along the whole of her back. Then, they left her tied to a post in the outskirts of town without any light to leave her for the shadows to "welcome" her sinful soul to the fold.

Keket was half-starved, dehydrated, battered and cut, bound, gagged, and left to die in the night. She wept as the she watch the sun setting, knowing the shadows would find her soon after it became dark. She was too weak to fight the bindings. When she was on the verge of consigning herself to her fate, when the light was almost gone, sudden brightness appeared behind her. A cabal of dissidents apparently existed in the town and had found her execution spot. They brought lanterns and various items to help her. A woman from the ground untied her and carried her from the pole. The group went into a long forgotten mine nearby and began tending her wounds as well as feeding her. Keket remained quiet the whole time, less scared of shadows but now equally scared of the strangers.

The next day, she woke to find the group still there. It seemed it was their barracks. As she looked at each face, she recognized others who had been sentenced to execution. Knowing what a soulless was, she frantically tried to see if they had shadows. The group reacted calmly, showing off their shadows to calm Keket. Once sufficiently quieted, Keket let them continue tending to her. It took two years to finally get back into her peak condition. During that time, she helped save a few more people and participated in a few small operations to hinder the Order of the Soul from taking more innocent life. Shortly after she turned 18, the group went on a larger operation to stop a particularly bloodthirsty and zealous inquisitor that threatened to go into every home to root out even the smallest heresy. On this operation, her group was led into a trap by a traitor in their group. Keket, through some cunning and help from the woman who originally carried here, escaped the slaughter and fled the area. After a few months of mourning and fleeing the hunting groups, Keket found herself in another settlement and managed to get onto an airship. There, she regained some semblance of a life, though she still felt like an outsider again. Now, she is ready and almost itching to find her place in this world and become strong enough for the Order of the Soul and others like it to fear her.

Equipment:
Cleansing Pressure Bands: two fitted for thighs, two fitted for biceps
Prayer Beads: These are from a small religion unknown to Keket. They were owned by the woman who first helped Keket.
Barbed Scourge: This is her primary weapon, used to trip up, harm, and control opponents.
Dirk: Hidden in her boot and mostly used for eating or opening packages
Hatchet: Kept under her faulds usually, mostly used for utility purposes, though also used in combat if her guns aren't useful.
Brace of Pistols: She usually wears a strapped setup that holds up to 4 pistols. usually two are loaded with buckshot or flechette types of rounds and the other two with standard balls. The buckshot ones have a flared barrel and wider bore while the standard ball ones are triple barreled and able to be fired one by one or with all three barrels in one pull.
Armored Clothing: With the exception of her underclothes and undergarments, Keket's clothing is a mix of cloth layers mixed with plate to allow flexibility, negated armor sounds, and yet still provide decent protection. It is not as effective as normal plate, but it provides more versatility and comfort, allowing her to wear it at all times with minimal added bulk and weight.

Extra notes: Her time in the dissident group led Keket to learn survival skills as well as skills in hunting, stealth, tracking, guerilla tactics, and certain spy skills. She can function as a covert operative given resources and time.
The group also taught her how to fight in both bare fisted and armed manners, though much of her skills come from improvisation and learning as she goes.
Her nickname came from one night where she ended up in a tavern brawl. She was the only one unscathed by the whole brawl, yet she still took down five other people to defend herself. This tavern was on the airship she lives on currently.

@Lotrix Molick

Has been approved!

@Jollan Accepted on both counts

@13org approved

minimum players reached, will remain open for 2 more.

op coming soon(tm)