[OOC] Where Angels Fear to Tread

[Espional]

I'd like to reserve a spot. I'm working on a character sheet but it's too late for me to finish it tonight.

[SyrianHamster]

We dead?

[camillethegnome]

I hope not

[Steel fist]

Hopefully not, I'm a little busy this week(Uni chores), will send my CS on Sunday :)

[Lotta Pumpkins]

Yeah this will be cool beans lets not let this die

[Primal Conundrum]

Sorry, this week is just suddenly turning shitty for me. This will be happening, likely just going to be a delay before we start.

[nonsequitur]

Are you still accepting?

Character Name: Senris Fragard

Species: Ystra (Shadow-Touched)

Species description:

"Ystra" is a catch-all term for the scattered tribes which live in the Changing Lands, areas with exceptionally high levels of ambient magic typically located between cities and kingdoms. The abundant magic tends to affect people's perceptions and at extremely high concentrations of magic, similarities in its composition between different Changing Lands allow people to cross over. As a result, it is extremely easy to get lost in a Changing Land. Because of this, a significant percentage of the Ystra consists of escaped slaves, persecuted minorities and their descendants. Over the generations, the Ystra have acquired a resistance to magic, making them immune to any attempts to warp their bodies and slightly resistant to attempts to warp their minds. They are equally immune to healing spells, and all of the tribes have a detailed understanding of herbs and natural remedies as a result.

The high magic levels in their environment seem to have affected their own magical abilities. A notable percentage of the Ystra have the ability to sense the flow of magic, allowing them to predict magical opponents in combat by sensing the spells they will use; a much smaller number can redirect it as well. In others, it appears to have woken the darkness in their hearts and given it a voice, granting them control over darkness and shadow and a voice or voices which tempt them with evil thoughts. Strangely, their presence also negates most attempts to control their minds through magical means, though most tribes are uncertain why this is so.

Noteworthy Abilities / Limitations:

+Navigation: Senris is talented with a map and has an excellent sense of direction. He is also familiar with the locations of magical spots leading to other places in the Changing Lands.
+Botany: Senris has a comprehensive knowledge of edible and medicinal plants and how to gather them.
+Perfect night vision: an effect of his shadow-controlling powers
+Immunity to mind control: as a result of being Shadow-Touched.

=Shadow Control: limited to twisting shadows to better conceal himself.
="Many Voices": Even for the Shadow-Touched, Senris has an unusually high number of mental voices; around twenty or so. He can use them to augment his own speech, the combined effect of which is enough to momentarily stun most enemies. However, he is not completely immune to his own power, and a full-strength shout would almost certainly disable himself along with his opponent.
=Combat: He has had basic combat training, mainly in effectively wielding an axe and rudimentary strategy. He is also fairly competent with a bow and arrow.

–Bloodlust: As a result of the large number of mental voices he has, Senris has an unquenchable desire to kill. This makes him exceptionally ferocious in combat, but it also makes him reckless: his defence becomes sloppy, and a calmer opponent could easily take advantage of an opening. This loss of control distresses him more than the murderous urges themselves.

Background: Before he was born, his parents' tribe fifty miles south of the Ruins of Ahya and bordering the South Spires was conquered by the Lene, a large tribe located on the Eblistan Plains which sought to unify their neighbours against the city-dwellers. As a boy, Senris accompanied his father on hunting expeditions and helped his mother at the medicine women's hut, where he learned most of his skills in botany and archery. When he was ten his Shadow-Touched nature and bloodlust became apparent and he was sent to train as a warrior, raiding villages and warring with other tribes. His teachers wanted a fighter who commanded the darkness to enshroud their troops and broke their opponents' will by their viciousness and mental attacks. Instead, Senris's darkness-control was too slight to direct and his bloodlust was more to his own detriment than his opponents. At twenty, he was never able to rise higher than a foot soldier. During one war against another tribe he got separated from his group, ending up in an area unfamiliar to him.

Appearance: Senris is 5'10", which is slightly taller than average among the Lene.

Image

A version of events

Once there were two brothers. Many things about them are no longer clear and the entire truth about them cannot be spoken, but like most brothers, one was older and one younger. One was tall, with fire in his eyes and starlight in his hair; the other is not spoken of.

Together they shaped the world, though it is no longer clear which parts each brother created. This is unimportant.

Eventually one of them stepped back and surveyed all they had made. It was a beautiful world, populated with every manner of creature they could design. But, he felt, there was something missing.

The other said, there are none like us in this world we have created. We shall make it so.

Both felt it was good, and set about endowing a number of their creations with wisdom, though which brother awakened which race none can say. This is irrelevant.

When they had awakened all the intelligent races the fiery-eyed brother was satisfied, but the other was not. The intelligent races thought like the brothers did, he said, but they could not do all that the brothers could do. Only when they had power like theirs could they be considered equals.

The first brother objected. With such power the intelligent races might find a way to live forever, as they themselves did, and might in time create their own worlds with their own intelligent races. They would surpass him, and he could not abide that.

The other disagreed, and when his brother's mind turned to other matters, he gave a third of his power to the intelligent races, allowing them to shape their world themselves. When the first sibling saw this, he was filled with rage and cursed his brother. His anger gave his curse form and speech, and it wormed into his mind.

The brother who'd been cursed struggled for three days and nights, his essence bleeding out into the lands he passed. Though its voices tore into his being, they were of his brother, his other half, and he could not drive them away.

At the end of the third day, nearly overcome by the madness and anger of the curse, the cursed brother sundered himself with one last effort of will. His essence and parts of the curse scattered into the lands he'd passed, and they have remained there since.

Of course, what is torn may well be mended, given time and effort to gather the pieces.

Hope this doesn't clash with the established lore. I also had an idea for a healer who turned to necromancy, but I wanted to see if this was acceptable first.

[Steel fist]

Just wanted to say I'm still here! Working on my CS..

[Steel fist]

Character Name: Shorus
Species: Minotaur
Species description: Big, strong, fierce and not so dumb (average human intelligence)
Gender: Male
Noteworthy Abilities / Limitations: Sharp senses(except vision which is regular), Infra- vision, natural navigation skill (can get out of any maze, always knows where is the North), natural cunning, Natural armor and weapons (Thick hide, horns and hoofs), huge physical strength and stamina.
Background: Shorus is a son of a hunter, so the others in his warrior centered village always gave him a hard time, not accepted into the village society he spent big amount of time experimenting with his father's hunting traps and became an expert of anything mechanical, he even once built a small catapult, using a picture he found as a guide.
Having good genes, Shorus is actually stronger then the average minotaur and he discovered it when he was recruited to the clans militia as a young adult, he was outstanding in heavy axe fighting and defeated even his superior officer, that was an unforgivable crime in Shorus's village. Shorus was expelled from the militia and is traveling the world ever since (as he has no intention of becoming a hunter like his father).
Appearance: About 9 feet tall, almost 4 feet in shoulder width, black fur and eyes, fierce face expression but rather intelligent eyes for a minotaur.

[Primal Conundrum]

This looks like it might need to stay on ice a bit longer than I intended- enough things have started suddenly happening IRL for me that I don't have enough reliability to run an RP right now. Long story short, I'm suddenly finding out that I have a relatively short time to pack up my life for a relatively long trip to move to the other side of the country. As much as I really like these characters that I'm seeing here and I want to RP with all of them, I don't feel that I could do an acceptable job running the RP right now.

If you guys are still interested when my life calms down in several weeks, I'm hoping to get this or at least a similar RP going again- I'll probably work with a couple of you (Steel Fist and SyrianHamster, looking at you two) to make a more clearly defined world so that we avoid some of the hiccups that we ran into this time. I've only ever really run RP stuff in real life at a table with dice, so I'm not all that great at doing it on a forum- that's probably really obvious to everyone right now.

Now, one alternative, and one I'd be happy to try to help with in any way I can, is if someone else decided to run this thing. Let's be honest, the world pretty well doesn't exist outside of what SyrianHamster has come up with, so that leaves a lot of room for creativity. I'd be happy to help with world design and coming up with story stuff, I just lack the amount of time required to guide a forum RP along any sort of a story arc.

So... that's all I have to say, I guess. I'm sorry about this, and assuming that nobody wants to just randomly pick up running an RP that they never set out to create, I hope I can get this going for you all in a few weeks!

[Steel fist]

Well, I lack of time to GM it, but if SyrianHamster would like to be a GM, I'll cooperate :)

[SyrianHamster]

Primal Conundrum said
This looks like it might need to stay on ice a bit longer than I intended- enough things have started suddenly happening IRL for me that I don't have enough reliability to run an RP right now. Long story short, I'm suddenly finding out that I have a relatively short time to pack up my life for a relatively long trip to move to the other side of the country. As much as I really like these characters that I'm seeing here and I want to RP with all of them, I don't feel that I could do an acceptable job running the RP right now.If you guys are still interested when my life calms down in several weeks, I'm hoping to get this or at least a similar RP going again- I'll probably work with a couple of you (Steel Fist and SyrianHamster, looking at you two) to make a more clearly defined world so that we avoid some of the hiccups that we ran into this time. I've only ever really run RP stuff in real life at a table with dice, so I'm not all that great at doing it on a forum- that's probably really obvious to everyone right now.Now, one alternative, and one I'd be happy to try to help with in any way I can, is if someone else decided to run this thing. Let's be honest, the world pretty well doesn't exist outside of what SyrianHamster has come up with, so that leaves a lot of room for creativity. I'd be happy to help with world design and coming up with story stuff, I just lack the amount of time required to guide a forum RP along any sort of a story arc.So... that's all I have to say, I guess. I'm sorry about this, and assuming that nobody wants to just randomly pick up running an RP that they never set out to create, I hope I can get this going for you all in a few weeks!

That's a shame, but thanks for coming out and laying things on the table for us. We've come a long way with this thing, at the very worst I'll just archive the character sheets and plot, then we could revisit it another time.

Steel fist said
Well, I lack of time to GM it, but if SyrianHamster would like to be a GM, I'll cooperate :)

Son, I'm GMing 2 already, am part of 1, with an interest thread floating in the void garnering support. I just don't know.

Hell with it, GMing an RP of this style doesn't require much actual GMing, I don't think. So let's have a look at what we got, and see what direction this fellah is going to go in.

So we'll keep the starting in a dungeon idea, forcing the characters from all walks of life to work together to escape. That's an awesome idea, time tested and solid.

Now, with the sandbox idea, I think I'll go on to create some loose form of a story - just to make our characters move. For example, they're all considered (wrongly or rightly) fugitives of Eblistan, and will need to escape the country before they are captured.

Hmhmhmmhmhhmm....

I tell y'all what, I'll go away with what we have so far, and release a "Community Revived" version, with credits going to Primal for its original conception. Stay tuned on here, as I'll post the links for when the thing is up. We'll most likely have to go through the same process, after I have released my modified version, i.e interest thread, OOC, then IC. Though the process will be quicker, I am a GM known for his efficiency in getting things moving.

I'm going to need at least 24 hours to get the ball rolling on this though, I'm a busy man, but never too busy to rekindle good ideas.

EDIT: Primal, if you simply wish to have a character in the Community Revived version, you would be most welcome. I'll feel bad if you're not part of it in at least some way.

[SyrianHamster]

Alright, I've modified the existing version and here is the draft:

Where Angels Fear to Tread (Community Revived Edition) Interest Check

EDIT: I probably should have gotten Primal's explicit permission before I went and did this. My bad. Primal, if you're not happy with me building on your idea (although credits are given to you!), then just say the word and I'll shut it down.