Wondering if people would be interested in RPing in this setting. I first tried doing this one a couple years ago to no avail so I decided to reboot it.
Beyond the City Walls takes place in the eponymous City, which is not just an impossibly large labyrinthian structure similar to a modern day metropolis, but a sentient force that can alter the majority (roughly ~90% of itself, known as the Active Zones) of its own structure at will, including its own internal laws of physics, create dangerous creatures that act as its tools in attacking those that live within itself, and absorbs any dead or discarded materials in its active, changeable areas to be reused to its benefit later.
It is roughly over one hundred years after the City first appeared sometime during the modern era in the central United States and began expanding all over the world until it's been all but consumed. It's unknown how many people currently live within the City, but civilization still exists.
While 90% of the City is considered Active and able to be manipulated by itself, the remaining 10%, large chunks of city and spiderwebbed lines running between them known as Dead Zones, are the areas used as outposts for the remnants of human civilization, known as Sectors. Most rely on trade, hunting, and searching for hidden stockpiles left by The City as traps to get by, but some have... diversified in strange and inhumane ways.
The absolute end goal of the game would be to escape the City or destroy it entirely. This, however, would take a lot of time and a lot of building up and working together to accomplish and as of yet nobody knows where to even begin. So currently, your initial job is to work for the well-being of your own Sector, Sector Three. The three primary jobs you can take are Retrieving, scouring the Active Zones for Caches of weapons, medicine, technology, and other such goodies; Hunting, taking bounties on dangerous criminals and inhuman beasts roaming the City; and taking post as a Soldier, protecting your Sector against invasion and war from enemy Sectors or more unnatural forces. The story is largely malleable, and as you keep going you can help figure out what direction the Sector is going to take and what your role in it will be. With any luck, by the end you'll have become veterans of the City, faced some of the nastier, more powerful denizens, and made a name for yourself across every Sector in the City. Depending on what you choose to do and how you go about it, you could discover the secrets of The City, become afflicted by the overall eldritch nature of the setting, make deals and pacts with things that don't bear mentioning until they come about, shift political tides, forge friends, stage coups, set up shops, do as you please the farther along you go.
Simply put, no matter how many people initially would sign up, splitting things across even two Sectors and three jobs would still be a six-way split, and then the story would be almost all waiting. As it grows both in terms of scope and momentum, more factions and jobs will be able to be taken both by your already established character, or by creating one character per faction (but not per job per faction) and using them simultaneously- generally as many as you can sanely do and keep track of in your head. The current limitations are to get the story moving fast from the get-go and then diversifying as it continues.
The City, to put it lightly, is massive. And a massive cosmic force that can shape itself and its own minions in any way it wishes can do quite a lot. Still, here's a few examples of the things you may find within the world: Sectors engaged in inhumane activities such as slavery, experimentation, cannibalism, or out-right City worship, strange creatures summoned by the City to protect its Caches or fight survivors, including the transforming, combining dark figures known as the Shadow Graphers and the avian, weather-changing Flock, as well as a slew of other creatures. You could go up against nomadic raiders, dangerous cults, and if you're very unlucky, you could find yourself face to face with one of the Afflicted, humans mutated by the influence of the City itself, physiologically and psychologically changing with a fighting benefit at the cost of their humanity and mental faculties, or the even more dangerous Constants, nigh-godlike beings that reside in Domains in the center of The City, not creations of it but powerful denizens of an indeterminate number that work symbiotically with it. You can find yourself in parts of the City where gravity itself shifts, where the world seems to be floating on platforms, where you can walk into a building and find things changed in bizarre ways. You could take part in wars or make your way as a trader or research the City or wander and give aid. The choices are up to you.
First and foremost, the site rules apply. No seriously graphic imagery, no nudity or explicit sexual content (it's not 18+), be courteous and polite to other RPers and while you can decide your own personal arc, you don't control others' of course. Don't be excessively OP and if you want to make significant changes to your character, such as becoming Afflicted, changing sides, plotting against his or her own Sector, or anything that would risk leading to an OP character or sending the status quo way out of whack, message me first and we'll work together on meeting in the middle to get that done. Other than that, there are a few rules on how many skills and what kind of equipment you start out with at the very beginning.
So if anyone's interested in this idea, let me know. It's a bit of an out there, more surreal take on the apocalypse, but hopefully it's unique enough for people to like the idea.
Beyond the City Walls: A Survival Story
Where and when is Beyond the City Walls set?
Beyond the City Walls takes place in the eponymous City, which is not just an impossibly large labyrinthian structure similar to a modern day metropolis, but a sentient force that can alter the majority (roughly ~90% of itself, known as the Active Zones) of its own structure at will, including its own internal laws of physics, create dangerous creatures that act as its tools in attacking those that live within itself, and absorbs any dead or discarded materials in its active, changeable areas to be reused to its benefit later.
It is roughly over one hundred years after the City first appeared sometime during the modern era in the central United States and began expanding all over the world until it's been all but consumed. It's unknown how many people currently live within the City, but civilization still exists.
While 90% of the City is considered Active and able to be manipulated by itself, the remaining 10%, large chunks of city and spiderwebbed lines running between them known as Dead Zones, are the areas used as outposts for the remnants of human civilization, known as Sectors. Most rely on trade, hunting, and searching for hidden stockpiles left by The City as traps to get by, but some have... diversified in strange and inhumane ways.
What is the goal of Beyond the City Walls?
The absolute end goal of the game would be to escape the City or destroy it entirely. This, however, would take a lot of time and a lot of building up and working together to accomplish and as of yet nobody knows where to even begin. So currently, your initial job is to work for the well-being of your own Sector, Sector Three. The three primary jobs you can take are Retrieving, scouring the Active Zones for Caches of weapons, medicine, technology, and other such goodies; Hunting, taking bounties on dangerous criminals and inhuman beasts roaming the City; and taking post as a Soldier, protecting your Sector against invasion and war from enemy Sectors or more unnatural forces. The story is largely malleable, and as you keep going you can help figure out what direction the Sector is going to take and what your role in it will be. With any luck, by the end you'll have become veterans of the City, faced some of the nastier, more powerful denizens, and made a name for yourself across every Sector in the City. Depending on what you choose to do and how you go about it, you could discover the secrets of The City, become afflicted by the overall eldritch nature of the setting, make deals and pacts with things that don't bear mentioning until they come about, shift political tides, forge friends, stage coups, set up shops, do as you please the farther along you go.
Why just the one faction for now and the handful of jobs?
Simply put, no matter how many people initially would sign up, splitting things across even two Sectors and three jobs would still be a six-way split, and then the story would be almost all waiting. As it grows both in terms of scope and momentum, more factions and jobs will be able to be taken both by your already established character, or by creating one character per faction (but not per job per faction) and using them simultaneously- generally as many as you can sanely do and keep track of in your head. The current limitations are to get the story moving fast from the get-go and then diversifying as it continues.
What kinds of things could you expect from the RP?
The City, to put it lightly, is massive. And a massive cosmic force that can shape itself and its own minions in any way it wishes can do quite a lot. Still, here's a few examples of the things you may find within the world: Sectors engaged in inhumane activities such as slavery, experimentation, cannibalism, or out-right City worship, strange creatures summoned by the City to protect its Caches or fight survivors, including the transforming, combining dark figures known as the Shadow Graphers and the avian, weather-changing Flock, as well as a slew of other creatures. You could go up against nomadic raiders, dangerous cults, and if you're very unlucky, you could find yourself face to face with one of the Afflicted, humans mutated by the influence of the City itself, physiologically and psychologically changing with a fighting benefit at the cost of their humanity and mental faculties, or the even more dangerous Constants, nigh-godlike beings that reside in Domains in the center of The City, not creations of it but powerful denizens of an indeterminate number that work symbiotically with it. You can find yourself in parts of the City where gravity itself shifts, where the world seems to be floating on platforms, where you can walk into a building and find things changed in bizarre ways. You could take part in wars or make your way as a trader or research the City or wander and give aid. The choices are up to you.
What are the rules for this RP?
First and foremost, the site rules apply. No seriously graphic imagery, no nudity or explicit sexual content (it's not 18+), be courteous and polite to other RPers and while you can decide your own personal arc, you don't control others' of course. Don't be excessively OP and if you want to make significant changes to your character, such as becoming Afflicted, changing sides, plotting against his or her own Sector, or anything that would risk leading to an OP character or sending the status quo way out of whack, message me first and we'll work together on meeting in the middle to get that done. Other than that, there are a few rules on how many skills and what kind of equipment you start out with at the very beginning.
So if anyone's interested in this idea, let me know. It's a bit of an out there, more surreal take on the apocalypse, but hopefully it's unique enough for people to like the idea.
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