Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Force and Fury
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Up for review!



Approved! I love how well you've integrated the lore! I'm looking very forward to RPing with Anna.
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Hidden 3 yrs ago 3 yrs ago Post by Gittarackur
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Gittarackur Me spooky

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Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Theyra
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Theyra

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Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Force and Fury
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@Theyra Approved. I think Karim is a nice mix of lowkey and still interesting, with hopes, fears, and motivations that make sense. You've done a great job with the lore too. I'm looking forward to RPing with you! OOC will be up probably tomorrow.

@Gittarackur There are some things in there that I like, particularly the background for his insanity. It feels quite genuine. His style of magic is also something that's cool and thematic and has a nice, distinct style. For what it's worth, every group needs its resident troubled/disturbed guy or misunderstood jackass. However, 9.1 is absolutely nuts as a RAS score and kind of puts him in a position to just run rampant over the group. Normally, anything above an 8 is considered prodigious, so I'm going to ask you to lower that to something a bit more reasonable. He can still be a prodigy, but he doesn't need to be a world-breaking psychopath. In the future, if the character is going in an interesting and worthwhile direction, there are ways in which he can gain power. I'm all for that. Also, just in terms of characterization and being period appropriate, I don't need a ton of 'haths' and 'doths' and all that jazz, but his opening quote/motto just really doesn't have the right feel for this RPG as it stands. Let's try to make all aspects of him make sense within this lore and not just some, alright? How about you keep the good stuff and work on those issues and get back to me in a bit. Sound good?
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Hidden 3 yrs ago 3 yrs ago Post by Dark Light
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Hidden 3 yrs ago 3 yrs ago Post by Force and Fury
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@Dark LightDigging the back story and the detailed description of his inventory and magic. Pending a reference picture, Vyrik is very much approved.

Also, in honour of an Eskandishman, I thought I'd post a little bit about the history and culture of Eskand.


A Story of the Founding, Flourishing, and Fall of Eskand

1200 years ago, by the reckoning of learned men, lived the most powerful magic user in the annals of history: the legendary Fradje Ironshaper. We can gather from old texts and modern deduction that he was a prodigiously powerful mooncaster, with an estimated maximum RAS of 9.70. Through force of will and arms, he unified the Eskandish tribes and sacked Avince, the capital of the Avincian Empire, bringing to his people great wealth, renown, and reverence. It is said that he lay with ten thousand women (and some men, though that's strangely absent from more recent retellings) and that fully five percent of the Constantian population today can claim ancestry from him, including much of the nobility. Yet, for all of his gifts, Fradje Ironshaper was but a mortal man and, the moment that he was finally called to the Visitor's table - for not even he could resist that call - there was no other figure who could hope to hold his empire together.

The empire or Avince rebounded, thanks to the efforts of Macian III, and lasted, against all odds, for another 250 years until its final collapse. The Eskandish people retreated south of the Haskell and Zeine Rivers, which today mark the border between Crisia and Perrence. They remained strong, however. They were fierce and feared and, for a time, Eskand itself and the two lesser Eskandish kingdoms of Drudgunze and Holbahnia bullied the North. The Northerners were a disaster: their kingdoms, duchies, and counties small, weak, and feuding, and they could not fight back. Soon, they did not even fight each other. They settled down and produced: works of literature and theology, fine jewellery and garments, delicious and exotic foods and spices that the Eskandish could not hope to derive from their cold and wild lands.

Much to the delight of the their Southern overlords, the Northerners paid their tribute, and they sent delegations with it each time: larger and more richly appointed delegations. These people had names attached to them that weren't their own names, like Somnians, Stresians, Dordians, and Hundrians. They met with Eskandish kings and spoke with them. They showered the kings with gifts. The kings forgot the Gods. They traded Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, and Visitor for Ipte, Shune, Oraff, Eshiran, and Dami. They decreed that their people should do the same. The Drudgunzeans bowed to the will of their kings - not all of them, and not all at once, but they did. In Holbahnia, the people rose, but so did the king's defenders. East and west were torn asunder: two kingdoms forever more. But in Eskand itself, the proud Jarls and Aerchonns put the king's head on a pike for his blasphemy and marched North. The worshippers of the false Gods recanted or burned. It had been many years since an Eskandish horde had marched north, and many things had changed, but there was nothing else that could be done that would satisfy the Gods or, truly, the people.

Only, this time, they were not fighting the soft and decadent men of the North; they crossed swords with fellow Eskandishmen. With difficulty, the great heathen army plowed forward, towards those green lands and their sly people with their silvery tongues and tempting wares. Yet, when they reached the waters of the Zeine, which had once been theirs to come and go from as they pleased, they were met by an army from the Kingdom of Perrence - an army versed in the Gift, armoured by a thousand blacksmiths, and trained by their former countrymen. The Horde collapsed and fled. The oriflamme of the Perrench fluttered, bloodstained, over the battlefield.

The men of Helbahn, broken in numbers, body, and spirit, returned to their homelands and made a humiliating peace with their Holmanian neighbours, if only to preserve a border between the two nations that had not existed more than two generations before. They accepted the new Gods and the new ways, and monks and nuns came to preach in their temples and minister to their people. They replaced the old script with the letters of the Avincians, themselves long disappeared. Proud Eskand refused to surrender, however. they retreated to their keeps and into the harsh, icy winters that had always made their home unassailable during the cold months of what the Northerners referred to as Somnes and Hundri.

In the Stresia, however, ships arrived. They were not warships. They carried tribute, as in the days of old, but the men who delivered this treasure were taller somehow, sterner now. They warned the Eskandishmen not to march North again, not to march north of the Hidsvark, which divided their kingdom from Holmania and Helbahn. This was an insult that they could not bear, for the lands to the Zeine and Haskell had always been theirs. Yet, they needed the money, to rebuild broken ships, weapons, bodies, and trade, so they accepted the terms and took it. Onto their lands they accepted the monks, who came to live among them. The Jarls and Aerchonns thought the king weak and demanded an assembly to decide if he was still worthy to lead.

From this was born the elective monarchy of Eskand, as he was found wanting and replaced. His successor, too, was unsatisfactory to her subjects, and she gave way to yet another. In truth, the lands of Eskand did not go down in a blaze of glory that would please the Old Gods. Those are much mythologized now anyway, and were not nearly so romantically savage as portrayed in later texts. The Drudgunzean nations furthest north, who had reluctantly accepted the Pentad and the Avincian words and customs from the outset, were carved up by differences, wars, and political marriages. There is yet some Eskandish blood there, but less as time goes on, and the tongues that they speak would not be recognized by their forebears. The middle kingdoms of Helbahn and Holmania also turned North, though less so. The former became a land of traders and opportunists, thieves and sailors. The latter, one of greedy burghers and grasping, beady-eyed bankers.

Eskand itself began to splinter, the islands of Hargelich, which had always been only nominally under its control, being the first to break away. The Juiskarnish Isles, perceiving the inertia of the Eskandish court and its backwardness, were next, turning trader and haven for political causes. These events, occurring within the span of a single lifetime, were traumatic to the old order. The Jarls held an assembly and chose a new king. He did not satisfy them. They held another, and this man died within months by the blade of a Black Rezandian. The assembly was in crisis. The two sides - one from northern Eskand and one from the south - remained at loggerheads, driven, perhaps, by a last spasm of that legendary stubbornness of their people. Nobody, however, listened to the West - nobody except the Holmanians to the north, with whom they shared a dialect and did a brisk trade. So in that year of Ahn-Eshiran-41, the kingdom of Eskand broke three ways. The Loh Eskandish had their king, as did the Ath Eskandish. The Barthic people split. Nobody expected it to last. There would be a civil war, of course, likely in the year cohort of Eshiran-Zept, for war was that God's blessing, and there would emerge a victor and a vanquished.

Yet, the war was barely a skirmish. The two Eskands focused on each other. The Barthics fortified their new borders and turned Northwards. The row became a schism. The schism a chasm, and no force of man or divinity has been able to heal Eskand ever since. Today, it is a shadow of the kingdom it once was. The Old Gods live on only in folklore and increasingly fanciful retellings of the past. Northern priests, merchants, and nobles take Eskandish wives and marry into or buy Eskandish land. The youth of the Noble and Merchant classes dress in the fashions of last year's Perrench and Revidian courts and speak and write Avincian. The great armies of Perrence have long since moved on from their borders to the south and reoriented themselves towards Revidia - on the old lands of Avince. The northerners and their great armies fight with rifles, cannon, and galleons amongst themselves now. Eskand fights within itself. Some say it fights for its soul - its reason for existing.

That is the story of the fallen kingdom of Eskand.


A Land and People Profiled: Eskand

(1/5 in the series)


Eskand is rich in resources: fish, timber, coal, iron, and gold. The waters are cold and clean and a great many whales and birds migrate there during the warm months of Stresia, Dorrad, and Rezain. There are fiery mountains along the spine of the Eskandish peninsula, and hot springs for people to bathe in. There is oil and uranium in the ground as well, as yet untapped until human industry is ready for it.

The people are hardy, stubborn, and not a bit resentful of northerners. They live on an ancient cycle, growing hardy crops in the thin soil and fishing by the coast. Many still hunt to supplement their winter food supply. They have a natural warmth and curiosity about them, but only if you get to know them and they sense that they can trust you. Once, they were travelers and explorers, but that has mostly changed in their culture. They can be religious and superstitious, often mixing Quentic belief with pagan practice. They treat the act of gift-giving with the utmost respect and solemnity and are believers in reciprocity and the sharing of resources between people. To a degree, they follow the creed of "from each according to his ability to each according to his need," but this is not absolute. If one is consistently found to be derelict in his or her duties, especially through lack or effort, that person is declared Aerdgangir and ostracized by the community. Despite common depictions of them as backwards, simple, and unwashed barbarians, Eskandishmen hold personal hygiene in the highest regard, bathing at least once per week, and taking pride in the grooming of their hair and beards. For women, it is considered a right to receive three days' rest - except for essential duties- when menstruating. Clothing is mostly designed for warmth and comfort and wool is the most common material due to the great herds of sheep raised in the northern part of the country. In the far south, seal leather is more common, and is traded with the north for wool.

Most Eskandish housing is built into the landscape itself, and either takes advantage of natural windbreaks like fjords or hunkers close together in shapes designed to deflect the harsh gusts. Fortified towns and villages are common, with wooden palisades backed by earthen ramparts. The most common materials are sod and stone, supplemented by wood, increasingly the further north one goes. Bronze, bone, and gold are used in decoration, and the second sometimes in aspects of construction. Most houses are also built around a central hearth and with a stone chimney.

Most cities in this country are small, with the exception of Hegelo, Vigholm, and the capital: Meldheim. All are located on the coast, for the bounty of the sea is needed to sustain larger populations. In these cities, great wealth and sophistication exists alongside squalor and crime. They are dangerous places at night and yet more prosperous than the oft-backward countryside. Though the Eskandish tongue dominates, one can increasingly hear languages from as far afield as Virang, Belzagg, and even distant Rettan.
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Hidden 3 yrs ago 3 yrs ago Post by TinyKiwi
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TinyKiwi

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Very easily might replace Mara

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Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Izurich
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Izurich 7/8 Weeb

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Very easily might replace Mara




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Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Bork Lazer
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Bork Lazer Chomping Time

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Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Gittarackur
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Gittarackur Me spooky

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@Force and Furyfixed my character.
Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Force and Fury
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@TinyKiwi I loved Mara, but Bango is amazing! Feel free to play whichever you like.

@Bork Lazer Dude. Just...dude. I'm in love with your character. I love his complex, intellectual, prickly nature and wild experimentation. The regional pasttime that you've created is awesome as well. Permission to incorporate it into the lore? Also, accepted, BTW.

@Gittarackur That's a significant improvement. TBH, I'd just be careful to make sure that you strike a balance in your RPing between seeming legitimately unsettled and not acting out to the point where any reasonable academy would expel you. Thierre is provisionally approved pending some demonstration of what a post from your character will actually look like in the RPG. Sorry for all of the hoops that I'm making you jump through, but basically any character above an 8.25 is a spicy proposition and I need to be certain that they're going to be a good faith actor.
Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Bork Lazer
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Bork Lazer Chomping Time

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@Force and Fury Yeah, you have my permission.
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Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by SnickerSnacker
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SnickerSnacker

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pls review, i spent a lot of effort on this CS
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Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Yam I Am
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Yam I Am Indefinitely Retired

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W E A K N E S S E S & F L A W S

❖Sane


100/10 best CS in the thread
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Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Force and Fury
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@SnickerSnacker NGL, I had a belly laugh at some of this stuff, and the player being lampooned had a good laugh at it too lol. That's some solid memeing skill you've got there.

(FWIW, if you wanna drop a more serious CS, feel free to do so as well. OOC is going up later tonight or early tomorrow).
Hidden 3 yrs ago 3 yrs ago Post by Bastian
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Bastian Busy Overthinking

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The lore for this seems so... fun. For some reason, the very academic approach to magic reminds me of the Kingkiller Chronicle. I'd love to take a stab at it, provided there's still enough space for more characters.
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Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Force and Fury
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@BastianBy all means, have a stab at it! The OOC has just opened up and you'll have until the end of the week to complete a CS: plenty of time. If you haven't already, feel free to join our discord.
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Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Noxious
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Noxious ᴅ ᴇ ᴀ ᴅ ish

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Intriguing...
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Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Force and Fury
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@Noxious Feel free to drop into our Discord or OOC. We're still waiting on some CSes and we don't start until Saturday. Would love to see you in there!
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Hidden 3 yrs ago Post by Gittarackur
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Gittarackur Me spooky

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@Force and Fury
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