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Hidden 2 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by CaptainManbeard
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CaptainManbeard

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UPDATE: Major Changes


Updates have been made to make it easier for everyone to know what effects go under what banners and all:

The Mortal Planes are parallel universes that co-exist in the same space at different vibrational frequences and are connected through various Prime Nexus Points where travel between them in possible using various magical means. Earth is one such Point.

The Aether is a realm of raw energy and power that surrounds the Mortal Planes and penetrates them, like the Force in Star Wars. All magic is fueled using Mana channeled from the Aether.

There are three types of magic:

Natural Magic: Anything that converts Mana into some physical energy or structure in the world, such as manipulating or conjuring the elements, casting healing spells, bending light, crafting illusions, affecting gravity, teleportation, time-travel, etc.

Psionic Magic: Does not create or conjure anything, but rather uses Mana to fuel psionic abilities such as telekinesis, telepathy, and the various other kinetics. Basically, you can control what is already present - including the elements - but you cannot create anything new.

Chaos Magic: Only theoretical, said to be the limitless magic of the Celestials, who are thought to have died out millions of years ago.

The Arcane Tongue is a metaphysical language that was embedded into the fabric of the Aether by the Celestials. Vocally, there is only one dialect the Aether recognizes, but there are over a dozen different runic translations that can be used. Just use your imagination for that, I will not define specific words or phrases.

Basic magic can be done at will, but more complex applications require use of runes from the Arcane Tongue, which are engraved onto your Arcane Conduits, such as wands, swords, amulets, etc. You can also utilize a grimoire with spells written in the Arcane Tongue and channel Mana into the ink to activate the spell.

Anytime the Arcane Tongue is spoken, use triple brackets. {{{"Like this"}}} You may use this method to call out spells and have that vocal component in the Arcane Tongue act as a Conduit as well.

I may add a few extra details with the main thread goes live, but I want to keep information needed for co-writers to remember to an absolute minimum.





NOTE: To avoid some of the issues with my past RPs from repeating themselves, I want to say right out of the gate that my tolerance for poor writing, plotholes, and ignorance of established lore has diminished considerably in recent years. Because of that, I am only looking for co-writers who take their craft seriously, who proofread their posts to ensure there are no plotholes, and who respect what has already been established in previous posts. If you're not sure about something, feel free to PM me to double-check before you post, and if I do notice something that falls through the cracks and I ask you to make edits, please don't take it personally.

Unbeknownst to much of the human population, Earth is a Prime Nexus Point, a place where different planes of existence converge and allow travel between them through magical portals called Versal Gates. Many of these realms work together as part of the Planar Republic, sort of like a magical version of the United Nations. They also have the Commonwealth of Arcane Universities, an organization overseeing thirty-two magical colleges across the various realms, including Qrowdell Academy.

Our characters are new students who are arriving at the school for orientation a few weeks before classes start. They can be humans, elves, dwarves, goblins, faeries, gnomes, or whatever other fantasy races you can think of, and can be from Earth or a community on some other plane. While some races may slow down in aging as they get older, I want them all to reach adulthood at the same rate as humans, meaning everyone should be around eighteen years old at the beginning of the RP.

Qrowdell Academy sits in Feywood Valley, which is visually similar to the area around Interlaken in the Swiss Alps, but exists in its own sub-planar realm. If one ventures past the Dragonridge Mountains encapsulating the Valley, they will glimpse an endless sea of trees in every direction, known as the Enchanted Forest. This acts as a barrier to the sub-plane and loops back on itself so that no one can travel too far without getting turned around and arriving back at the Valley. There are school legends dating back generations telling of hidden secrets out in the Forest, but the faculty insist these are just myths. For simplicity's sake, we'll say the Qrowdell's plane is synced with the seasons in Earth's northern hemisphere and aligned with the same time of day as the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, England.

The Commonwealth of Arcane Universities is partnered with the Intercollegiate Battlemancer League, which pits teams from different schools against each other in combat sport-related events. At the beginning of the Fall semester, the schools are randomly placed into four Branches of eight teams each, who then compete against each team in their Branch over the course of the school year. By the end of the Spring semester, each team should have participated in seven matches, which usually entail magical duels and fighting waves of artificial monsters. If any teams are tied for number of wins, they have Elimination Matches so that one team from each Branch proceeds to the Crimson Cup Championship. This is a weekend-long challenge where the final four teams enter a huge, monster-infested island from four different starting points on a Friday morning and must find the Crimson Cup - a huge red goblet - before the Sun goes down on Sunday night. There are multiple underground dungeons throughout the island, but only one contains the Cup. The first team to find it and get back to their starting point wins, but other teams can fight them and steal the Cup for themselves.

So, my idea is that at least some of our characters join the Qrowdell Stormhawks team and we can play that out, but at the same time, we begin to investigate rumors that the Cult of Tiamat has returned, led by the Chromatic Council. This leads to the presence of the Paladins of Bahamut within the school's walls at one point, who are incredibly suspicious of any troublemakers and are prone to making false arrests.

That's already a lot of info, so I'll leave it there for now and see if anyone is interested.
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Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by Crimson Flame
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Crimson Flame *Insert something profound here*

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Me again :P
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Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by Jarl Coolgruuf
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Jarl Coolgruuf The Mellower

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I'm down to clown
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Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by Lunafreya Miku
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Lunafreya Miku Mikuruu~

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Oooh I might be interested.
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Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by vietmyke
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vietmyke

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I'll keep an eye on this
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Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by CaptainManbeard
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CaptainManbeard

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Welcome everyone! If we get a few more people interested, I'll flesh out the school and world a bit more.
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by Blizz
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Blizz Grand Chancellor Supreme of the Wizard Council

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I like the sound of this
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Hidden 2 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by Light
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Light Please @ me, I'm Sunday bored

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I'm also very interested. I'd love to hear more specifics about how magic works in this setting/rp, and what we'll be able to work with when making our characters. Also, would this be a magically dominant setting? Or are martial/artifice/technological types of characters equally viable?
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Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by Blizz
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Personally I don’t know what sort of magic I’d write for a character yet, so I’m also curious
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Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by aladdin_sane
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This looks quite intriguing. I would be game.
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Hidden 2 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by CaptainManbeard
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CaptainManbeard

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I'm also very interested. I'd love to hear more specifics about how magic works in this setting/rp, and what we'll be able to work with when making our characters. Also, would this be a magically dominant setting? Or are martial/artifice types of characters equally viable?


To make it simple and viable for a wide range of abilities, we'll say all magic is fueled by channeling Mana from the Aetherscape, which is a realm of pure energy that encases and penetrates the Mortal Planes. More experienced Magi can manipulate Mana by sheer will, but for novices like our characters, they require an Arcane Conduit, which can be a wand, a scepter, a ring, an amulet, a sword, a floating crystal orb, a musical instrument, or even runes tattooed onto their body with enchanted ink. Everyone, feel free to throw around some ideas for Conduits for your characters.

As for the types of magic, we'll say the Aetherscape has different shades of Mana swirling about, each of which encompasses an Arcane Art:

Red Mana: Pyromancy (fire)
Blue Mana: Hydromancy (water)
Green Mana: Ecomancy (nature)
White Mana: Cryomancy (ice)
Teal Mana: Aeromancy (wind)
Orange Mana: Geomancy (stone)
Yellow Mana: Electromancy (electric)
Purple Mana: Cerebromancy (psionic)

Those are the eight approved Arcane Arts, but there are also several Forbidden Arts, which are all sub-types of Black Mana:

Dark Cobalt Mana: Necromancy (death)
Dark Scarlet Mana: Hemomancy (blood)
Dark Ivory Mana: Osteomancy (bone)
Dark Jade Mana: Chronomancy (time)
Dark Violet Mana: Psychomancy (psychic)

One thing to note is that I listed two similar-sounding powersets as two distinct Arts:

Cerebromancy: Using your mind to reach out and affect the environment around you, such as telekinesis, telepathic communication, creating illusions, etc.

Psychomancy: Invading the minds of others, such as to remove existing memories or implant new memories, brainwash them, trap them in lucid nightmares, etc. Hence the reason it is a Forbidden Art.

Sorry it took me so long to get this post together, spent many hours researching different types of magic to decide what to include, lol. If you have any questions about the Arts listed, don't hesitate to ask! XD.

As for types of characters, feel free to throw around some ideas! You could have a martial artist who has tattoos with enchanted ink as their Conduit, and those tats could be Words of Power in an Arcane Tongue (ancient magical languages/runes that were embedded into the fabric of the Aetherscape by the Old Gods like a programming language, thus causing the universe to respond when the Arcane Tongues are activated with a Mana flow). Or those Words of Power could be engraved on a weapon or item used as a Conduit. Or perhaps a grimoire/tome. Or machines/artifacts.

I'd love to hear your ideas XD.
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by vietmyke
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I like the idea of a character with runic tattoos- specializing in either electro or geomancy to conjure up weapons from which to throw or hit things with- I like the idea of chucking lightning or stone spears at various baddies. Non human races are allowed, so I guess the followup question is are half-human half-Xrace allowed?
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by CaptainManbeard
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I realized I forgot to directly answer that other question - yes, it is a magically dominant setting, meaning every character has magical capabilities. However, that can be applied in many different ways. If someone wants to play an artificer, for example, they could use a machine as their Arcane Conduit, such as a little robot animal that follows them around or something. They can also build devices to assist them in combat, such as an enchanted crossbow or blaster pistol that fires out energy bolts or wrist-mounted web-shooter-like devices that conjure magical vines.

Or, if someone wants to play something similar to a purely martial archetype - like warriors and fighters in TTRPGs - they can use their weapons as Arcane Conduits, and channel their abilities through that, such as a sword or axe or daggers. We'll say that during Orientation, the freshmen students go through a Sorting Ceremony where it is determined which path is best for them, including their Primary Arcane Art, Secondary Arcane Art, and Arcane Conduit. During this event, each new student takes a turn standing in front of the Crystal Mirror, and their reflection is encased in a two-tone aura that flashes through all the color combinations before stopping on the ones they are most attuned to. The inner aura is their Primary and the outer aura is their Secondary, and then their reflection is seen holding whatever their Conduit should be. If it's a warrior-like character, their reflection will probably hold a sword in a battle-ready pose. If they are a more scholarly character, perhaps their reflection will be holding a grimoire.

After the Sorting Ceremony, the faculty writes down a list of everyone's projected starting Conduits (they can upgrade to different ones later) and has them crafted so that they will be available when classes start a few weeks after Orientation. In terms of the chronology of events, the Orientation and Sorting Ceremony are single-day affairs that take place in early August, and then the students go back home and return to the school in the first week of September when classes start, at which point they are assigned dorm rooms.
Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by CaptainManbeard
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I like the idea of a character with runic tattoos- specializing in either electro or geomancy to conjure up weapons from which to throw or hit things with- I like the idea of chucking lightning or stone spears at various baddies. Non human races are allowed, so I guess the followup question is are half-human half-Xrace allowed?


Yeah, sure! Or you can make up your own race that blends features of other races together. Think of the races as sort of like human ethnicities in places where many different cultures co-mingle - it's a genetic melting pot of diversity XD. I'm sure there will be catboys and bunnygirls and wolfmen and lizard people and birdfolk and everything inbetween running around the Academy, so feel free to use your imagination! XD.
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And if anyone would like inspiration for your characters, you can look at the races on D&D Beyond for some ideas:


Hidden 2 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by Light
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A pretty neat and organized little system that's still quite open ended. Nice. I'm curious if there are schools of magic for healing, force, sound, light or darkness? Or if these kinds of magic are interspersed among the schools you listed?

And/or are there any Divine arts? Or is all magic learned and therefore Arcane?

I'm also intrigued that time magic is considered taboo in this setting. Not that I disagree with the choice, it's just interesting as a side note.
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Hidden 2 yrs ago Post by CaptainManbeard
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A pretty neat and organized little system that's still quite open ended. Nice. I'm curious if there are schools of magic for healing, force, sound, light or darkness? Or if these kinds of magic are interspersed among the schools you listed?

And/or are there any Divine arts? Or is all magic learned and therefore Arcane?

I'm also intrigued that time magic is considered taboo in this setting. Not that I disagree with the choice, it's just interesting as a side note.


Yeah, most of those functions can fall under the eight Arcane Arts. For instance, using Electromancy, one could create soundwaves by firing off a lightning bolt big enough to create a clap of thunder. Or, since sound requires oxygen in order to be heard, you could potentially manipulate that with Aeromancy. And using many of those eight Arts, you can also generate forces, light, and shadows. For instance, fire creates light, which then also creates shadows. As for healing, aspects of the different Arts can be applied to that, but Druids who specialize in the regenerative spells within Ecomancy tend to make the best healers within the students.

And while some people may use their magic in service of a religious figure - such as the Cult of Tiamat or the Paladins of Bahamut - they derive their power from the Aetherscape like everyone else. All magic requires Mana, and all Mana is channeled from the Aetherscape XD.

Though, I do want to specify - the Forbidden Arts are restricted for the students because they require advanced training at specialized schools to master. Chronomancy is used by older, wiser Magi, usually investigators who need to go back in time to secretly witness a crime or gather intel on some dire situation. Any use of Chronomancy is heavily regulated so as to not create paradoxes. Same with Hemomancy and Osteomancy, which are generally only permitted for trained medical doctors and surgeons. Psychomancy and Necromancy are the most restricted of them all and are almost universally condemned outside of wartime.

I hope that answers some of your questions XD.
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I'm put in the mind of someone who uses technomancy. Their primary is cerebromancy and secondary is electromancy, they don't necessarily build machines but they use their primary to bend the "wills" of machines (such as an AI) and their secondary to manipulate the body.

I got a question though, if the Crystal Mirror reveals someone has a "dark" aura such as the one for Necromancy, what's the procedure then? Is that student pulled from the side to be vetted for secret necromancy classes? What if they're really unfortunate and have two dark mana shades? Such as both necromancy and hemomancy?
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For sure, it seems like you've got your bases covered, hahah! I'm still not married to a school of magic yet for my character but I'll have something by the time is CS time.
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Hidden 2 yrs ago 2 yrs ago Post by Crimson Flame
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Name: Noble Taeral Granlock
Race: Elf
Age: TBA
Gender: Genderfluid Nonbinary (They/Them)
School of Magic Cerebromancy



Brief History: Taeral was born into a wealthy aristocratic family. The Granlock family had a lot of wealth and influence. Taeral was groomed to follow in their family’s footsteps. Early on Taeral had an aptitude for Cerebromancy. They would use their Cerebromancy to cast illusions that alter their appearance.

Outside of their family, Taeral did not have much of a social life. Taeral did not conform to gender norms, and was always thought of as weird because of it. Taeral did not feel that they were exclusively a man or a woman, they consider themselves both and neither. Sometimes they would present feminine, some days they would present masculine, and other days they would present as a mix of the two. No matter how they presented, they still thought themselves beautiful, but others didn’t agree.

The only place Taeral found acceptance was with *insert religious figure here*
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