Across the walls, all is quiet. The year is 844, and the world is still. What preludes the greatest of storms is the sanctity of peace. For humanity, trapped in their concrete bird cage, too many have grown too comfortable living in fear. Life has its way with the complacent. Where the holdings of humanity - the twelve districts across the three walls - stand tall, underneath the banners of the Stationary Guard, kept in order by the Military Police and vanguarded by the Survey Corps, so do the adversaries beyond it. The behemoths, fleshy and humanlike, dominate the outer lands, endangering those that waltz beyond and those that live just out of safety's reach. The grim exterior cannot be kept out forever. Someday, on a grim morn, there shall be a great rupture, a disturbance unlike any other in living memory. A cold, desolate hour, where images of great distraught stand firm in the eyes of those that withstand it.
~~~
Welcome all to AoT - The Western Siege - a scenario where humanity is faced with a breach along the Western parts of its territories whilst also in its South, resulting in a much less favourable position for all involved. Re-kickstarted by a talk over a six year old RP that was on here, a good few of us wanted to throw the hat back into the ring and bring back an enjoyable setting of old. First and foremost, this obviously isn't tied to the whole canon, though it should remain more or less the same in most aspects. There's details to discuss once interest has expanded, but we'll have a look as is.
'The Western Siege' focuses on the lives of a select cast of characters, right from their first experience at the breach, a quick shot through their training experiences and up until they find their place in the military's varied branches, and attempt to reclaim the lost districts. These characters aren't quite the best humanity has to offer, but they're set to be in the thick of all of it - a struggle greater than a hundred years' comparison. How these people grow, develop, bond, fight, rival one another and how their stories end is a long journey we can cover. It's quite a good setting for this sort of thing, as people can drop in and out fairly easily, due to things like the high mortality rate of the series. It's one of those things I'm willing to keep open application wise from start to finish almost.
A main focus of this RP in specific is distancing itself from the whole shifter schtick. I'd say that's the most major change. Some will still be there, but not in our character pool. I don't want to devalue other players and shine the focus and efforts on a single or few specific people, dwarfing the ones our words represent. How they tie into the story will be reduced, but also, if seen, amplified in severity. This is a focal point of discussion whilst we set up and go through the story, so we'll see how that goes.
A few good people here are interested, many of which were in the original renditions of this. So we already technically have enough to "start", but I'm open to see who'd like to throw their hat into the ring. I'd say to expect something far more akin to the first main steps of AoT's story, rather than its far later settings and focal points. It could go in that direction, but by god we'd have to get very far for something like that to take precedence, and you know what we know about the longevity of RPG threads. Still, I'm at least determined to get a good, complete story of ours out of this, with a wonderful cast of characters, showing how they grow and fall in this world of great sorrow.
One point of interest is how the post-training stories go. Whilst previous versions did focus a lot more on the training, I think we will keep it a lot shorter; AKA - the key introduction of it, some interactions and maybe one scene of training that doesn't linger too long, to develop the characters a bit more, but as that usually is a pitfall where people get trapped in story progression, I aim to not linger us there for too long. Their ascension into one of the three branches is of great interest. And to begin with, I'm okay with there being a choice of all three: the Survey Corps, Stationary Guard and Military Police. As the story does focus a lot on the "taking back" of territory, there's a lot of inter-branch collaboration to be had, whilst the freedom to choose those three also allows the avenues for secondary stories to be created and done without interrupting the main plot. As the story develops further, perhaps we may all find ourselves under one branch, but if not, I will have a way to incorporate all three under one umbrella without it being too "out of pocket". From this, it shouldn't have to railroad you into being a big boy survey corps lad.
Any and all questions regarding this RP are greatly appreciated beneath. Equally, and interest is best made aware of in the thread here! Don't worry if you find this late, so long as the OOC and IC thread is still active, there should be room to join. To those that are interested, I thank you greatly, and I also thank those that read the whole bloody thing. Cheers lol.