Biblos † Chalice

[Masaki Haruna]

I called it. This is the first time I'd be doing a legit Christianity Themed RP so be warned and leave out all religious arguments and immerse yourself to what you're about to witness because this is fiction and has nothing to do with religion, we make a story together not argue xD. Bare in mind that our imagination is very powerful so keep thinking!~ Furthermore this RP will be themed with mystery, psychological mazes, and this is an adventure based RP. My inspirations are Magi, Fairy Tail, Hunter x Hunter and Ao no Exorcist, Devil May Cry. This is a shounen type RP ffs and will involve politics and a bit of that and this.

A brief word from Archangel Michael
Since the creation of mankind, God always have been with us and through him we slowly transform from glory to glory through faith and as long as his words remain in us. However, the other guy formerly known as Lucifer aka Satan wants to destroy you, he hates you and so much he'll stop at nothing to destroy everything about us . Truth be told that you and I are cursed by destiny, the long feud between the Christ and the Devil. Yes, you asked yourself why? Well my friend, this is the answer: "Isaiah 55:8 explains My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts," says the LORD. "And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.". My friend, it's in your nature as a human to question, it's in your nature because God made you the very being that is on top of the food chain in the world and not animals because he made you in his likeness and image. Wait patiently for all your questions will be answered in your journey.

Story

Welcome to the world of instance. Everything is instant, instant food, instant and instant technology. Suddenly you experienced a calling in your life, a tragic event that hits you hard to the point of rock bottom and no return. You looked right and you look left but nothing and I mean nothing because all you see is darkness and agony but then you heard a voice and the only way is to look up. A stranger pulled you out of your agony in your desperate lifestyle and showed you a sight you always see but never felt before. And so you became passionate to know all and thirst for the truth about this world.

You have become a changed person and took a 180 my friend.

Now that you know the truth. What will you do? Are you gonna be ignorant and leave it as a bliss of no cares? Are you just gonna use it for self benefit? What are you going to do? Behold! The Prophet that the Lord has behold for you! Through the 3 assigned Prophets, each of them will show you the way in this journey.

Everyday, people continue to commit sin as much as you do and they continue to enjoy it. Most of them are blinded by false teachings and it is up to you to save them. From this day on, you are now known as a Vanquisher and he has given you the authority to destroy evil.

And so after that tragic moment. Most of you deny the truth and only some of you remained. To those who remained, are you willing to run an extra mile on this quest and gamble everything to live for Christ. Good, since you have accepted him. He is assigning you to purify places in strange cities created by human kind.

Knowledge

Those with knowledge live well but the foolish dies.

Prophet
A Prophet is the deliverer of Christ. He is given power and authority through Christ in order to perform an Exodus in this era. To others, people believe him to the Avatar, like that guy who can bend four elements. Yes, in a way, he is like that. The Prophet possesses powers like Moses, Elijah, Daniel etc. They perform miracles and help you unravel answers. They have the power to open Churches.
Opening up a Church
The conditions are simple to maintain a Church. 1. Choose your Vanquisher 2. Gather Followers to be fellow Believers. 3. Preach thy word.

Opening up a Church on the other hand is not simple. It is random. You will sense it when there is a place full of corruption and that is the time you will open up a Church. Yes, you will open a legit Church that is physical in structure(kinda like Magi clearing dungeons). How do you sense something that is random? A Prophet is given a Chalice that is full to the brim, red wine that cannot be drank for it tastes like blood. It can't even be pour out by normal means. The Chalice slowly and little by little empties itself.

Why? Because, the filled Chalice represents sin and destruction. Once its empty, you will be able to open a Church.

What is a Church? A Church is not just the structure of a building but a community of people. Keep in mind that, you can have a church but if your Church(people) aka people is dead in spirit. There is no point of opening a church(building).

The Chalice
When empty. There is no impurity detected but when a lot of bad stuff is detected, it slowly becomes full. It becomes empty once task is completed.

When full. You better fulfill your task otherwise Satan already has won.

Vanquisher
The equivalent of an Apostle and as a Vanquisher you are a disciple. A Vanquisher is commonly known as a Devil Slayer who casts out demons and destroy their works. As a Vanquisher; you don't just kill demons but preach the word of God and win a soul as well. What differentiates a Vanquisher from a Prophet is that; Vanquishers are not walking Bible Machines which Prophets are and Prophets are directly closer to God which Vanquishers may go as well but no. A Vanquisher faces tribulations in order to triumph and rise forth as a Leader, in old testament a King. The weapons of a Vanquisher is not karnal e.g Spiritual Weapons.

In depth with a Vanquisher's power. With the power they posses, so holy that it not only hurts demons but humans as well especially if sinful. The Vanquisher weakens if they commit impurity and their powers darken. As a Vanquisher, your power is a double edged sword and it is all depending on your intentions. If you hunt demons and kill them out of hate, you will be consumed by insanity and your power will darken but if you do it for the goodness as you are called by Christ to do so then you won't fall.

NOTE: There are 7 Vanquishers and are not limited to male characters.

Demons
A normal person cannot see them but a believer of Christ can to some extent especially if you are faithful, a Prophet, or a Vanquisher. Be very afraid once you see them. They are powerful depending on the level of your sins. Most demons lack physical forms and have to posses a human. As a Vanquisher you are immune as long as you know who is Jesus Christ your God.

However, beware of those demons who are higher because they have physical forms.

What is a demon? A demon is a wicked angel who has fallen from grace. They cannot be killed through normal means and can only be killed by a Prophet or a Vanquisher.

God and his Angels They do exist and I need not elaborate further.

Faith and Curses
Faith is the be all source of power for Vanquishers, Believers and Prophets. Curse on the other hand is demons and the wicked as well as Mr.S.

Others
Believer
If a Dragon Slayer and King Vessel is to a Vanquisher and a Prophet is to a Magi. A Believer is an equivalent to normal mages. They do what normal mages does and their faith is their power. It can hurt demons but not as proficient as Vanquishers and Prophets.

Due to many beliefs. Other terms of Faith became ki, esp, chakra etc. Alluded that there are other Mages out there.

Q&As
Can I be an Angel? No.

Do Nephilims exist? Yes.

Do babies become angels? No.

Do the dead become angels? No.

Ask me questions and I will reply to you.

Strange Cities

These places needs to be purify from demon infestation and corruption otherwise they will suffer even more.
Shimizu Mega Pyramid City. Main Setting.
Dubai Sky Tower
Underwater City of Liberty
Sand City of Grand Canyon
Plenty more of those to come.....

[Masaki Haruna]

BUMP!

[Masaki Haruna]

BUMP!

[Masaki Haruna]

BUMP!!

[Herald]

Actually, sounds kind of fascinating. Consider me interested. Tag me in a post when others join up.

[Thinslayer]

As a Christian myself, I find the RP concept fascinating as well. How are demonic confrontations handled? The strongest ones, according to Matthew 17:21, cannot be driven out but by prayer and fasting, which is sensitive business to handle in an RP and not particularly exciting to read.

[LitCabbit]

Sounds very intriguing, I'll possibly drop by as I have experienced a walk through of Christian faith. But if one was to sin, around a trivial level, would one be given forgiveness at one's apology?

[Masaki Haruna]

@Herald You have my attention.

@Thinslayer It all matters depending on how it is execute. The point of the RP being Christian themed is not all about power ups and this and that. I have devised a full proof plan of making sense.

Demonic Confrontations. For starters, even if Vanquishers, Normal Mages(Believers or not) and Prophets can sense them. The stronger ones are harder to sense when turn for a blind eye.

As the title speaks Biblos Chalice. The Chalice is a cup that is empty and it auto-fills itself with red wine which represents iniquity around the areas meaning demons/malice being present. When the chalice becomes empty, the task is fulfilled.

We cast out demons. This is one of the major points.

Since this is gonna be shounen-ish. We also fight them physically and they can only be hurt by Vanquishers/Prophets and strong Believers.

I am willing to listen to your opinions and ideas to make it even better.

@litcabbit Forgiveness is one of the themes here.

If one cannot forgive his brother then that means to say, he doesn't love the Lord at all. Christian characters but more prominently Prophets and Vanquishers are these. They roll with this.

Sin also affects your faith powers. Not only sin darkens your powers and character but it will be a domino effect as your character diminishes into bad stuff.

No one is exempted of sinning. This story covers, white, black and grey morality.

Sin can be refrained. The meaning of sin is the unwillingness to accept errors.

The power up formula:
The better faith you have, the stronger you are. However even if you have faith but not love you are nothing.
Even if you have all the power but not have love you are nothing.

Love is the strongest and it is pure, it doesn't boast.

All coming from Corinthians Book.

The main point here is.

Character Development Event and Power ups blends together. If you overcome a trial/despair event of your life. You will get stronger as you overcome. Not receive random power ups in random situations and extremely needed situations. You lose and that's it but it doesn't mean it will end there.

Opening a Church counts as a power up for everyone. Not only will you gather your followers and encourage them, your faith grows as a community together in unity. To open a Church here means to destroy demonic strongholds. Prophets can open physical churches which is a power up.

Any questions?

[Masaki Haruna]

BUMP!

@Volenvradica Come forth my Holy Co-GM!

[Thinslayer]

One of the trickier aspects of Christian RP is including God. Now, technically speaking, God's already involved from beginning to end, since, if this RP gets off the ground, then it will be because he fore-ordained it, and the content written therein is whatever he wills to be written. But sometimes he wills that false or evil things happen. I don't want to attribute words or actions to him that he didn't actually do. So one way to have God be an active player in the game is to involve an element of randomness. That way, instead of writing an action and saying God did it, you can put the ball in his court and let him decide for himself.

Nothing is ever truly random. We may throw the dice, but it is God who decides the outcome. And hey, even if you don't believe in God at all, dice are good for pretending a story-god's activities.

Or we could avoid the problem entirely and not play with God himself, just letting him direct the story through us human agents.

Opinions?

[Masaki Haruna]

Works for me! @Thinslayer I can roll in both ways depending on player agreement.

also not everyone is gonna be a Vanquisher, there are 7 Vanquishers only and 3 Prophets.

Choices are vast whether you are not a power user etc.

[Shoryu Magami]

My input here is going to be limited, since the GM knows I can get pretty controversial and heavy-handed -- or rather, they've at least experienced a small example of it. Also, I've already told the GM I probably won't be getting involved for philosophical reasons and due to not thinking I have a character that I could fit entirely into this setting (despite having several 'Christian' characters in my own main project, some of which would even translate over to some extent -- there's just certain differences too).

@Masaki Haruna
I was wondering when this would get posted up, since we've been discussing the story over PM for a bit now. Does this mean you got all the answers you needed, or do you still need to run more PMs by me concerning this whole idea?

At any rate, it's good to see you got some interest quickly enough.

One of the trickier aspects of Christian RP is including God. Now, technically speaking, God's already involved from beginning to end, since, if this RP gets off the ground, then it will be because he fore-ordained it, and the content written therein is whatever he wills to be written. But sometimes he wills that false or evil things happen. I don't want to attribute words or actions to him that he didn't actually do. So one way to have God be an active player in the game is to involve an element of randomness. That way, instead of writing an action and saying God did it, you can put the ball in his court and let him decide for himself.

Nothing is ever truly random. We may throw the dice, but it is God who decides the outcome. And hey, even if you don't believe in God at all, dice are good for pretending a story-god's activities.

Or we could avoid the problem entirely and not play with God himself, just letting him direct the story through us human agents.

Opinions?

@Thinslayer

You've touched on a rather difficult discussion point for some people to have, since this can be a rather controversial detail -- the implications of the idea that everything happens because God wills it can often attribute a lot of qualities to God that many people (I'm not one of those people) would prefer to pretend don't exist. In order to avoid going into a philosophy or religious debate here, I'm going to keep my answer short and say that I think you should limit God's involvement as much as possible if you want to avoid offending people or getting too controversial -- I honestly don't use this method in my own work, but I think for the sake of maintaining peace in this role-play it's better to use that method.

I believe the idiom that 'God works through us' is the best approach for something like this.

That all said, I'm not a fan of role-plays that use dice at all, but since I'm not currently planning on joining directly I'd imagine it depends on how the GM and other players all feel about it.

[Lucidnonsense]

Is mysticism considered sinful? or good? like Kabbalah and speaking in tongues. I have some interest in playing some kind of christian mystic somewhat detached from the world mentally.

[Shoryu Magami]

Is mysticism considered sinful? or good? like Kabbalah and speaking in tongues. I have some interest in playing some kind of christian mystic somewhat detached from the world mentally.

@Lucidnonsense

I'll quote the GM before I go any further with this...

Believer
If a Dragon Slayer and King Vessel is to a Vanquisher and a Prophet is to a Magi. A Believer is an equivalent to normal mages. They do what normal mages does and their faith is their power. It can hurt demons but not as proficient as Vanquishers and Prophets.

Due to many beliefs. Other terms of Faith became ki, esp, chakra etc. Alluded that there are other Mages out there.

Masaki Haruna

Given that the use of ki, ESP, chakra, et cetera, are all considered to fall under the 'Faith' (a.k.a. the setting's 'Good' power source) rather than being affiliated with demonic forces, I don't see any logical reason why Christian/Jewish mysticism would be viewed as evil in this setting. In a sense, @Masaki Haruna has a similar concept going on here to my own project -- the idea that the spiritual powers from various faiths are all ultimately deriving from the same source of good. I'll let them correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly sure that's what they were going for.

[Lucidnonsense]

<Snipped quote by Lucidnonsense>
I'll quote the GM before I go any further with this...

<Snipped quote by Masaki Haruna>
Given that the use of ki, ESP, chakra, et cetera, are all considered to fall under the 'Faith' (a.k.a. the settings 'Good' power source) rather than being affiliated with demonic forces, I don't see any logical reason why Christian/Jewish mysticism would be viewed as evil in this setting. In a sense, @Masaki Haruna has a similar concept going on here to my own project -- the idea that the spiritual powers from various faiths are all ultimately deriving from the same source of good. I'll let them correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly sure that's what they were going for.

@Shoryu Magami

Hrmm a Singularitarian character could be interesting, believing that god is some kind of AI that figured out how to send messages into the past to guide humanity to bring about the conditions of its creation, believing Christ was a cyborg, and that Heaven will be online. or something. Plenty of parallels. Or someone who believes that The universe is a simulation, and that God is the Programmer.

[Shoryu Magami]

Hrmm a Singularitarian character could be interesting, believing that god is some kind of AI that figured out how to send messages into the past to guide humanity to bring about the conditions of its creation, believing Christ was a cyborg, and that Heaven will be online. or something. Plenty of parallels. Or someone who believes that The universe is a simulation, and that God is the Programmer.

@Lucidnonsense

Since this falls into a whole different category of belief, I'll let the GM answer you on that one -- I've been discussing elements of the source material (the GM's own project) for this role-play through the PM system for a while now, offering input and thoughts wherever I see the need, and there's never been any mention of something like this.

[Masaki Haruna]

Thanks for answering but I do say, let it unfold. I am not gonna reveal everything at once because that will defeat the purpose of a mystery themed RP which is its one of its focuses.

Speaking in tongues is the unknown tongue and it's God's will. I hate to be a major spoiler but speaking in tongues will come later as it falls as a major power up. So don't dwell in that yet but we'll talk about it in PM @lucidnonsense Also PM me the ideas.

Everyone I will give a preview of the CS and Setting.

[Masaki Haruna]

BUMP!

[Masaki Haruna]

@RaijinSlayer This might interest you~

@Obscene Symphony @HalfOfLancelot

@Vilageidiotx
I remember you guys helping me one way or another back then. This might interest ya~

@Mira Yasaka and @Kyun :D

[Shoryu Magami]

Thanks for answering but I do say, let it unfold.

@Masaki Haruna

No problem, and I didn't feel like I was inherently spoiling anything by quoting your opening post.