Subject: The Relics

[Ellri]

A thousand and three years ago, the continent of Azukhar, upon which you now find yourself, was ruled by a single great kingdom. Something, only the gods know what (and they’re not tellin’) happened to that kingdom, making it break apart. Maybe it was a war, maybe it was a cataclysm. It is impossible to say for sure. All that remains of the Old Kingdom are scattered ruins, a few odd intact structures and the Relics.

The Relics are mystical objects found all over the world, indistinguishable from ordinary, everyday items. They can hold any shape. A weapon. A jewel. A book. A garment. A piece of Armor. Any shape, nearly any size. To the average yeoman, a relic is impossible to identify.

You however, have found yourself in possession of just such a relic. Not only do you possess it, but you have found that it has activated for you. It could have been months ago, it could have been yesterday. The relic has changed your life. It could be for the better, or it could be for the worse. If anyone can say for sure, it is you and you alone.

You could come from any walk of life, from any nation. Maybe you’re like most others around you, a citizen of the Kingdom of Othea? Are you perhaps even from the nobility? Or just a common citizen?

But of course, you might not be Othean… Maybe you’re a member of the fanatical Order of Idris? Though many deny the truth, falling for their lies, those who know how the world ticks all know that the Order seeks to destroy all relics and the evokers wielding them… Perhaps you’re even one of their feared Inquisitors? Wouldn’t that be ironic?

But it might be that you’re not at all like those. Perhaps you are instead a citizen of the Enigmatic Kalesian Empire? If you are, you can consider yourself lucky, for the Empress, may she live forever, has decreed that evokers, like children, are a gift from the Goddess. Serving her and the Empire no doubt brings you great pleasure. Unlike most other societies of Azukhar, you need not worry here if you are a man or a woman. All have equal opportunities.

It was mentioned earlier that you are surrounded by Otheans. That is true. In fact, you find yourself in the Othean Capital city, Amaryth. It is located upon a small peninsula upon the shores of the great inland sea. No matter where your loyalties lie, you must be wary, for the Order of Idris has agents all over the city, and they would gladly see you die. Do you think you have what it takes to survive?

The City of Amaryth

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General Information:
This is an Open-world roleplay. There is no single set of tracks you have to follow. Within the general limits set by the GMs and the other players you are free to invent new directions for the plot. Or you could follow along with other players’ plots. Or you could simply go about wreaking havoc with their carefully laid plans. If it looks good and fits the existing lore, you can do it.

The level of posts are usually around casual or high casual. You’ll be expected to be able to write a paragraph or three, but you won’t have to write pages long. Quality trumps quantity any day of the week. Nobody here will force you to do anything. The only sort of things you won’t be permitted to do are these:

• Godmod/powergame/metagame
• Post absolute nonsense
• Post text walls or one-liners
• break guild rules (obviously)
• Not have fun

Here’s a few useful links:
OoC / IC
Character Sheets
Lore Document

You’ll find most everything you need there. We especially recommend that you give the Lore Thread a peek. If you’ve not been discouraged by the time you’ve peeked that a bit, feel free to jump into the OoC. Or you could jump in there first. We don’t mind either way. We won’t bite you. Much.

Currently requested roles to cover (you don't have to take these):
Inquisitor of the Order of Idris (a true paradox)
Someone who believes as the Order of Idris does (relics = bad. Perhaps playing on the concept that the ends justify the means)
Prince of Othea (The GM who planned to control that one had to drop out due to RL)
Othean Loyalist (these can be most anything)
Othean Traitor
Kalesian Evoker

[Naked Bohemian]

This looks really intruiging.

BTW: OC and IC links seems to belong to different RP.

[Ellri]

oh. whoops. Pesky subscriptions and copying wrong URL by accident.

Fix'd.

[Fallenreaper]

Bump!

Come on, always looking for fresh blood and fun writers.

[Fallenreaper]

-sighs-

[Sep]

Interested

What if I don't have fun though? :O

[Ellri]

Then we disembowel you, Sep. Special offer, just for you.

[TheMasterNarrator]

Interested. Looking at the Kalesian Evoker role, I have something interesting in mind. I should have a preliminary CS up soon, with a full version following within the next couple of days.

[TheMasterNarrator]

Preliminary CS

Raxas Althar
Raxas is the possessor of the Eye of Time, an artifact that has bonded with his left eye.



He is a much prized Evoker of the Kalesian Empire, as his artifact gives him the ability to see into the future. At base, this extends only to ten seconds, but with careful meditation this can be extended, allowing hours or even days - with the proper array of clocks around Raxas as he meditates - of foresight.

Furthermore, he has a limited ability to manipulate time. He can cause inanimate objects to age at incredible speed. However, this is much harder to do on living beings as such entropy is opposed by their inherent spirit, something that an object lacks, requiring focused concentration to the exclusion of all else to produce any noticeable effect. This protection extends somewhat to equipment on one's person, but not to things away from it. In practical terms, this means that Raxas can disintegrate unattended inanimate objects with little more than a glance, cause severe aging to personal equipment such as armour and weaponry over the course of several minutes, and advance a person's age by perhaps a day with a minute of fully focused concentration on them.

The final aspect may not seem useful, but the aging does not just affect the person - it also affects things within them such as poison and disease, lending itself to subtle assassination.

He can also do exactly the inverse, turning back the clock to restore burned fragments of parchment to legibility, cure poison, shore up defenses and the like.

Finally, his most potent ability is to, once every twelve days, stop time for twelve minutes. When time is frozen, he may move and interact with inanimate objects freely, but cannot affect living creatures. It is theorized that, were he to wait for a year without using this ability, he could stop time for twelve days, and so on, but this has not been tested due to the more immediate utility of such a power.

[Ellri]

Interesting concept. How is it balanced out? What are the disadvantages? How is it "fueled"?

just noting down listed abilities:
Predict future
Aging non-animate objects rapidly to point of disintegration
Turning back time on some objects
Short-term time stops

The aging one seems the one with greatest potential for being overpowered. It needs some means of limiting itself. Perhaps related to how the relic is "fueled"?
Also, the short-term time stop doesn't entirely make sense. Perhaps replace it with something about him tweaking time to seemingly blink across greater distances, but keeping the limiter of once every n days at best.

[Pathfinder]

Oh hey, I remember this. Now that I don't have so much on my plate could I come back?

[Ellri]

Of course. its changed a bit from back when you were in (different GM and such, but the concept is essentially the same.

[Pathfinder]

Cool, I'm a little busy right now but I'll get a cs up later.

[Ellri]

Fair enough. We won't be on to check it till tomorrow in any case. we should've been asleep two hours ago.

[Asura]

Golly gee, mister, this sure looks swell!

[Pathfinder]

WIP

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Name: Roland Lawrence

Age: 28

Gender: Male

Faction/Allegiance: Fights to protect the Kalesian Empire and its people.

Relic Description: Standard of Valor

A golden flag with the silhouette of a flaming eagle branded upon it, the Standard of Valor gives its bearer the ability to ignore vicious wounds that would incapacitate normal warriors while also allowing the bearer to fight with the ferocity of a hurricane. However the Standard of Valor's true strength comes in its ability to rally those of similar mind to fight along the bearer side by side until the bitter end.

Appearance: A fairly handsome man, Roland's family hails from the high mountains and the heritage peeks through. Fair of skin and dark blond hair that reaches shoulders, usually in the form of a ponytail. Rolands face is dominated by strong features.

Flaws:

Skills: A skilled bandit in his youth, Roland knows his way around a sword of any length but tends to uses short sword the most. Along with that he is bar brawler and a dirty fighter. In none combat situations he is highly versed in the herbs of the land and basic first aid.

Biography:

Personality/motivation:

Relations:

Final Point - Secrets:

Theme Song:

[TheMasterNarrator]

Ellri said
Interesting concept. How is it balanced out? What are the disadvantages? How is it "fueled"?just noting down listed abilities:Predict futureAging non-animate objects rapidly to point of disintegrationTurning back time on some objectsShort-term time stopsThe aging one seems the one with greatest potential for being overpowered. It needs some means of limiting itself. Perhaps related to how the relic is "fueled"?Also, the short-term time stop doesn't entirely make sense. Perhaps replace it with something about him tweaking time to seemingly blink across greater distances, but keeping the limiter of once every days at best.

Alright. Essentially, you know that aging effect he has on things around him? That's the Eye drawing in local time to fuel itself. From exhaustion (the hand on 12 and dull), it can fully fuel itself in 12 days (the hand on 12 and glowing gold.) He can accelerate the drain for an emergency charge, but the discrepancy between the charge he gains and the time drawn from local objects increases massively - his armour and weapons would just disintegrate from age.

Thus, the aging of something is actually simply discharging time from the Eye into other objects en masse. This has to do with W=J/s, - the same amount of chronal energy hits harder when introduced in a smaller timeframe.

Disintegrating a single arrow would take up perhaps a quarter of an hour's time, a siege bolt two hours, a stone from a trebuchet half a day and so on for larger objects. The reason people are resistant to this is that their Spirit naturally compensates for temporal flux - the expressions 'killing time', 'the time flew by' and 'it seems like only yesterday' are far more literal than anyone thinks.

The time stop thing doesn't seem illogical to me. What it's really doing is projecting Raxas outside the timestream. To him, it seems like time has stopped, but really he's just in a little loop off to the side of the main timeline. And this is also key to its function - the very presence of the Eye affects time in a fundamental manner, the way it manipulates it causing tangles in the timeline. When an external loop is created, it's due to the Eye unlocking the snarl of time that its presence has created in such a way that the threads of the timeline snap back into place, creating a temporary surge of chronal energy that fuels the external loop.

This means that, contrary to what the Kalesians think, it would be a very bad idea to go for a whole year without discharging the Eye's time stop function - wait too long and the timeline can be irreversibly altered and damaged.

[Ellri]

One issue we can see with the concept. The society is more medieval than anything, thus clocks aren't readily available. This isn't steampunk or gearpunk, but rather relatively low fantasy. The only known source of magic are the Relics. everything else operates on a standard medieval basis with normal laws of physics. The few clocks that might exist would be situated upon massive structures, typically things like great universities. Solar clocks and water clocks could exist all round, though. Oh, and this isn't earth. The clocks, if they exist in reliable fashion at all, probably won't be base 12.

The relic concept's ability to disintegrate objects seems too easy, with no real restrictions. Like we're doing in the criticism on another sheet, we'll suggest exploring the idea of a single primary ability rather than the numerous ones here.

One quick question: how controlled would the object disintegration/aging be? If he can't quite control the level of aging or exactly what is aged, it would be more acceptable to have it powerful. Kinda like the ability of the character Alessia by Sundered Echo (see CS thread). She can for example create a hemisphere of knee-shaking fear, but she can't control who it affects. It affects everyone in range except herself, allies and foes alike. As such, it is a double-edged sword.
The more powerful an effect is (especially ones that are physical), the shorter the range is.

Moving outside of time can too easily be abused, thats how we feel about it.

Still, we see much potential in a time-messing relic concept.

---

Pathfinder:
That appearance seems a bit impractical. Many of the things hanging from that armor are a threat to him more than anything, hindering his own movement.
No matter how strong our armor, we would not want to have a multi-kilogram spiked ball hanging freely at our waist by a short chain.
That sword there can't possibly be balanced. Its far too heavy a blade. We know that from our own (very unbalanced) sword. Too large blade, not nearly enough pommel.
still, despite those obvious issues, We've seen a lot worse. The base armor itself looks good, and the human inside it has more or less correct body proportions. use description to remove a couple of weapon errors and such, and the appearance should be good-to-go.
Plate armor is fairly rare in the Kalesian empire, as they tend to go with scale mail armor, but thats a minor hurdle compared to the other ones above here.

As for the relic:
Changing into a lance is pretty impractical. once used, a lance is discarded. Mostly because its stuck deeply into another person's body. Unless it has a means for returning magically to its sheath, that is. That would make it a very interesting relic.

[TheMasterNarrator]

Ellri said
One issue we can see with the concept. The society is more medieval than anything, thus clocks aren't readily available. This isn't steampunk or gearpunk, but rather relatively low fantasy. The only known source of magic are the Relics. everything else operates on a standard medieval basis with normal laws of physics. The few clocks that might exist would be situated upon massive structures, typically things like great universities. Solar clocks and water clocks could exist all round, though. Oh, and this isn't earth. The clocks, if they exist in reliable fashion at all, probably won't be base 12. The relic concept's ability to disintegrate objects seems too easy, with no real restrictions. Like we're doing in the criticism on another sheet, we'll suggest exploring the idea of a single primary ability rather than the numerous ones here.One quick question: how controlled would the object disintegration/aging be? If he can't quite control the level of aging or exactly what is aged, it would be more acceptable to have it powerful. Kinda like the ability of the character Alessia by Sundered Echo (see CS thread). She can for example create a hemisphere of knee-shaking fear, but she can't control who it affects. It affects everyone in range except herself, allies and foes alike. As such, it is a double-edged sword. The more powerful an effect is (especially ones that are physical), the shorter the range is. Moving outside of time can too easily be abused, thats how we feel about it. Still, we see much potential in a time-messing relic concept.

Alright, fair enough.

Eye of Time, v2

Chronal Drain: The Eye has a constant minor draining effect on everything in close proximity to its bearer. This serves to fuel it, but also accelerates the aging of its bearer's possessions. This can be accelerated in an emergency, but the disparity between energy drained and charge gained increases drastically. The maximum charge is reached over [whatever base the world's time is in] days.

Chronal Shunt: The Eye can discharge some of its stored chronal energy. This energy is ejected along the line of the bearer's vision and ages the first thing it comes into contact with by an appropriate amount considering its mass, composition, the energy discharged and inherent Spirit, the last of which greatly mitigates the effect.

Chronal Inversion: The Eye can invert the time of objects which are fully within the bearer's field of vision and can be seen with clarity. This allows burnt paper to be restored, blotted writings to become legible and so on. The amount of chronal energy this takes depends on the mass of the object, its composition and its inherent Spirit, the last of which greatly mitigates the effect.

Relative Chronology: The bearer of the Eye can expend its charge to increase his personal time relative to the world's, making him appear to move much faster. This costs a great deal of charge, and can only be sustained for [whatever base the world's time is in] minutes.

Chronal Knowledge: A passive effect, the bearer of the Eye always knows exactly what time it is and can tell how old anything he's looking at is. He also gains a rough judgement of how much chronal energy is required to produce a desired effect, but the constant flux in the world's timeline means that the precise amount changes from moment to moment, making the measurement an average rather than an absolute.

[Ellri]

Decent relic name.

suggesting replacing "chronal energy" with "chronic energy", or some sort of gibberished name.

TheMasterNarrator said Chronal Drain: The Eye has a constant minor draining effect on everything in close proximity to its bearer. This serves to fuel it, but also accelerates the aging of its bearer's possessions. This can be accelerated in an emergency, but the disparity between energy drained and charge gained increases drastically. The maximum charge is reached over [whatever base the world's time is in] days.

This is fairly ok. Just pick a fitting number that isn't base 6, 12 or 24. The total length of a day is probably fairly similar to ours, +/- a few hours.

TheMasterNarrator said Chronal Shunt: The Eye can discharge some of its stored chronal energy. This energy is ejected along the line of the bearer's vision and ages the first thing it comes into contact with by an appropriate amount considering its mass, composition, the energy discharged and inherent Spirit, the last of which greatly mitigates the effect.

This is interesting... a person or animal is obviously harder to age, but so too would a cherished object of some sort. Just imagine the idea of just how much spirit is imbued into a four-year old child's favorite stuffed animal. You could probably add a few other limits, but that can also be worked out IC.

TheMasterNarrator said Chronal Inversion: The Eye can invert the time of objects which are fully within the bearer's field of vision and can be seen with clarity. This allows burnt paper to be restored, blotted writings to become legible and so on. The amount of chronal energy this takes depends on the mass of the object, its composition and its inherent Spirit, the last of which greatly mitigates the effect.

Perhaps add a size restriction on this? That its easiest with parchment or such, but can also to some degree be done with other materials (say, restoring a chipped sword). Also, this should be much harder the more time is rewound for an object. a piece of paper that was burned yesterday would obviously be easier than a piece of paper burned last century.

TheMasterNarrator said Relative Chronology: The bearer of the Eye can expend its charge to increase his personal time relative to the world's, making him appear to move much faster. This costs a great deal of charge, and can only be sustained for [whatever base the world's time is in] minutes.

This is much better now.

TheMasterNarrator said Chronal Knowledge: A passive effect, the bearer of the Eye always knows exactly what time it is and can tell how old anything he's looking at is. He also gains a rough judgement of how much chronal energy is required to produce a desired effect, but the constant flux in the world's timeline means that the precise amount changes from moment to moment, making the measurement an average rather than an absolute.

This is also fairly good. Always knowing the time is a skill of varying usefulness.

The relic looks about ready to take to the next CS stage now, barring the few points above.