[OOC] Fire Emblem: A Blinding Light

[PlatinumSkink]

Also, question- will we be fighting the monsters you mentioned, or just enemy humans?

@Draconfound

I wouldn't have the monsters unless I intended you to combat them sooner or later. But for now, Jehanna is the main enemy, the monsters are something the world just knows exist and have to be fought when encountered.

Everyone's characters are so much stronger than mine... At this rate, Calico's going to end up being left in the dust T-T

@Nightmare Bunny

They're stronger than the NPCs, too, so you'll have plenty of company! They're the odd ones! And they can't do this by themselves...! XD

... Alright, now to write a bit on Archibald.

[Harbringer]

I look forward to your judgement.

[PlatinumSkink]

I’d like to make a note that I am probably going to keep the effective range from the games. Otherwise archers would be reaching most of the map, I believe. … Door key. *snicker* … I will note, you'll probably have needed to contend a lot with Jehanna mercenaries. Since, yeah, those lords and caravans you're attacking probably very frequently have the mercenaries of the desert protecting them. … Well, not anymore considering Jehanna is attacking Grado, but before that. … How does he react to Jehanna invading, anyways? While the main troop, King Sion and those, are not mean to citizens of Grado and is only going directly for the Fire Emblem there would be a fair amount of Jehanna guilds that took the option to just raid as they liked and such... Well, anyway. I'll leave that to you.

Hider

Aaaaah, aahahahaahaa-haaaahaahaaaa-hahahaha… I’m looking in your backstory, at the individual that caused your descent to bandithood… Haha… That kind of character! The kind that I utterly despise and would never willingly create under any sort of circumstance for any sort of reason because I am completely disgusted at how such existences could even come to be~! … It doesn’t seem like he dies in your backstory. *puppy eyes* Mind if I have Rioga gut him? And that I can write a long and detailed description of how he goes into great detail to cause the maximum amount of pain and suffering to that bloated obese figure of decay…! He's in my roleplay now, I can do whatever I want with him, now that I finally have such a character in my grasp I can completely torture and splash all his existence all over the walls and make the world DREAD to even DARE to be anything even REMOTELY similar to his kind of character in case they might suffer the same fate…! … … … … Heh. As much as I am appalled to actually have such an individual have any kind of role in this roleplay of mine, even more so if I have to play him, I suppose the pleasure of gutting him might be something I should properly give to my players for maximum enjoyment, I suppose? … Ti-hi…

*the above paragraph was not part of the judgment and should not be considered as such, it was simply PlatinumSkink as a person reacting as a proper person should, the existence of such individuals is OK and you do not need to worry about having offended anyone*

There are two little things I want to bring up. They’re not necessarily anything you need to change anything on, but I want to mention them. I did not imagine Grado to have been a particularly bad place to live. Sure, it would have been damaged from the Earthquake but otherwise recovering nicely, even if Jehanna mercenaries were stealing exp preventing the warriors from actually getting strong. However, your backstory describes the worst kinds of crapsack oppression by nobles against the people. Had Rioga heard of such happening in his empire, he WOULD gut the scum after a trial, he’s the Court Emperor for a reason. Though, you make this sound like a regular thing. I do admit that having to buy the mercenaries of Jehanna to fight monsters would most likely take a bit on the nation’s wealth, so perhaps the people would be somewhat poor, but… Yeah. Rioga is a leader who cares about his people, and he wouldn’t have let such a thing come to pass if he knew of it.

That is to say, it isn’t unacceptable because of this. We’re essentially living on a super-continent, and the Grado Empire is the largest there is and also the hardest to cross. Grado Keep is in the far east, it is possible things have taken a turn for the worse in the western areas, especially over seas or such. The reports could possibly be filled with lies, a secret held from their Emperor by corrupt lords… though, that pretty much changes the way half the nation is built, and it also rather drastically affects the aura of the nation. I mean, I was trying to go for a rather good aura to counter the corrupted aura Grado had in the game, but this kind of reverts that back to how it was with the Emperor just being the exception who is unknowingly ruling over an ailing nation not knowing the troubles going on. … Which honestly makes him a bad Emperor.

I am somewhat aware that I may be blowing things out of proportion with those statements, feel free to explain to me what you had in mind in terms of scale and that sort of thing. It is still perfectly acceptable, some conflict is alright, I just want to know how much this is affecting. I may have to write about this in the Grado portion of the Contents of Magvel post, after all, so the other players know what we’re dealing with.

As for the second thing, you write that you’re the leader of a merry band of bandits. I’m just curious, how are you intending on joining and what are you going to do with your band when you do? I mean, yeah, in Fire Emblem we don’t really have bands joining the team, perhaps two or three at a time as maximum, and I have to assume you do intend to join the party since that’s, well, the idea of this roleplay. Do you have an intention where you want to be placed when the roleplay starts and what development you’re otherwise expecting around that? If you don’t want to share those details with your fellow roleplayers yet, then feel free to provide me the information as a PM to me. I just feel a bit curious to how this is going to work, according to you.

Other than that, you have quite the character here. It is quite evident you put quite a bit of writing into this character, too. The source of inspiration is pretty obvious, but eh, no faults in that. XD … Yeah, I could see this being quite the interesting individual to have around. There are no issues character-wise or such. You have spoken of his skill, which does explain the C-rank mastery, and bandit experience does merit Level 4. Yeah, everything checks out. I just want to hear you comment on that which I have mentioned above, first. Alright?

Edit: Also, those cards are pretty nice. How difficult is one to make? I mean, I have 20+ NPCs back here... XD

[Nightmare Bunny]

They're stronger than the NPCs, too, so you'll have plenty of company! They're the odd ones! And they can't do this by themselves...! XD

@PlatinumSkink

That's right! Calico isn't weirdly weak, Archibald and Habit are weirdly strong!

FYI, since the party has to recruit these two... does it have to be the lord character who does it like in the game? Or can other characters do it?

[Apollosarcher]

I'll drop my character in later, still working on a decent back story.

[PlatinumSkink]

@Nightmare Bunny
Hm? What do you mean, Lord character has to do it? ... Oh, is that the case throughout Awakening? No, most certainly not. There will be circumstances where it will be more obvious who is to be recruited by whom. For example, if there is a particular girl that is looking for her brother and suddenly her brother shows up in the battlefield it is a pretty safe bet that you are to talk to him with his sister. And in other cases it is a little bit more obscure what you have to do, like in that one case where what you were supposed to do was first talk to a character with his student (that you didn't even know was his student) and THEN need to defeat him WITH YOUR LORD, an act that would kill any other character, and he won't join if you talk to him with anyone else and there is nothing hinting that defeating him with the right character is the way to recruit him... I still curse over that particular thing! It took until the sequel until I learned one could, in fact, recruit him and didn't have to kill him...!

In any case. You can talk to a person with anyone and you might possibly get the character depending on the words chosen. Might even talk with the right character using the wrong words, and it may fail anyway, assuming it is a player character (NPCs will naturally be led to succeed should they be the ones I intended to recruit a person with, *snicker*). But yeah, those restrictions don't exist. Haha. ... One usually uses one's lord to talk to characters that one did not get any clue on how to recruit. Unless you're playing the first Fire Emblem / Shadow Dragon. Then you're using the Pegasus girl instead. ... Haha.

@ApollosarcherGot it~ Take the time you need~

[Nightmare Bunny]

@Nightmare Bunny
Hm? What do you mean, Lord character has to do it? ... Oh, is that the case throughout Awakening? No, most certainly not. There will be circumstances where it will be more obvious who is to be recruited by whom. For example, if there is a particular girl that is looking for her brother and suddenly her brother shows up in the battlefield it is a pretty safe bet that you are to talk to him with his sister. And in other cases it is a little bit more obscure what you have to do, like in that one case where what you were supposed to do was first talk to a character with his student (that you didn't even know was his student) and THEN need to defeat him WITH YOUR LORD, an act that would kill any other character, and he won't join if you talk to him with anyone else and there is nothing hinting that defeating him with the right character is the way to recruit him... I still curse over that particular thing! It took until the sequel until I learned one could, in fact, recruit him and didn't have to kill him...!

In any case. You can talk to a person with anyone and you might possibly get the character depending on the words chosen. Might even talk with the right character using the wrong words, and it may fail anyway, assuming it is a player character (NPCs will naturally be led to succeed should they be the ones I intended to recruit a person with, *snicker*). But yeah, those restrictions don't exist. Haha. ... One usually uses one's lord to talk to characters that one did not get any clue on how to recruit. Unless you're playing the first Fire Emblem / Shadow Dragon. Then you're using the Pegasus girl instead. ... Haha.

@PlatinumSkink

Oh. I'm an idiot.

In Awakening, you literally could not recruit a character unless you talked to them with Chrom (the lord) or their parent. It was actually kind of bizarre… Chrom was just recruiting random people left, right, and center. Heck, even the player character was recruited like that. I mean, seriously, what the hell kind of army is made up of random people that were essentially picked up off the side of the road? That's Fire Emblem for you, though. It was also really annoying that Chrom was the only one who could recruit, because I ended up having to ferry him everywhere with a Pegasus Rider, and he missed out on a ton of EXP because he was too busy running around trying to recruit people…

At least we didn't have to solve any complicated puzzles XD

[PlatinumSkink]

Oh. I'm an idiot.

@Nightmare Bunny

That doesn't make you an idiot. XD
In any case, I'll be providing little conversations whenever there are characters on the map. So, if anything is the puzzle it will be trying to figure out if you have any character available to recruit the person with. It will vary in obviousness, of course. Well, in some cases maybe anyone will do, other times... yeah. All up to you. I think I've described this subject enough, now. Haha.

[Harbringer]

Archibald and his boys shoot to wound, not kill, and attack from ambush to take caravans. Jehanna mercenaries are nothing if they don't know they're being attacked. As for Jehanna attacking? Archibald feels no loyalty to who owns the land. If it gets taken over by Jehanna, he's fine with it as long as they are just and honourable, like Rioga. Any caravans to the Emperor himself are not attacked, both because they are more well guarded and because Archibald holds respect for him. The raiding he has to put a stop to, and is rapidly degrading his opinion of Jehanna though (I mean, if you can't control your troops, what kind of leader are you), so he could very easily be turned loose against Jehannan forces. You just have to know what to say to him.

The plausible story of the corpulent lord would be, rather than a lord, he is a regent acting in the place of a lord. The previous one died of old age, leaving his young son to manage to land. Still unprepared to do this, the lordling hired a regent to do the management for him...only this man essentially locked the true lord away in the study and did corrupt things in his name, acting as a malevolent force. Seeing as he was now the head of all administration, he could send out false reports and the actual lord knew nothing about what was happening. Being a lonely county up in the north west, surrounded by barren mountains I figured Rioga wouldn't exactly have muich time to find out about false reports.

Grado itself isn't a bad place as long as the Emperor knows you're there, but when you're a small outlying village with few fertile lands and barely ekeing out a living it can get pretty bad when an earthquake messes you up. The place isn't even visited by traders all that much seeing as its so out of the way and mostly poor so apart from the false reports filed by Lord Fattarse, theres not much information coming out of that region. I don't know if I made it sound like a regular thing though, I tried to limit it to only that area. And don't worry about other corrupt lords. Thsi guy isn't even a lord, only a regent (Maybe even from another nation)

As for joining I'd think he'd just be a neutral character against the bandits trying to escape the fight by getting to one of the stairways in the top left of the map. You really just need someone to convince him to join (Who is not a Lord) by cementing evidence of Jehannan misconduct. He's already teetering on the brink so it shouldn't take much. Other than that, allied forced may try to detain him since he just finished stealing from the pantry with his two bandit buddies. With placement, I'd think just running from the empty passageway in the top right to the top left stairway, fighting Jehannans as he goes.

After being recruited, he'll hand over the reins of his Merry Band to his Lieutenant who will run operations in his absence, until he returns. Oh, and I can make those trading cards for you, and even give you two styles to choose from.

Clean:


Fancy:

[ruler710]

I'd love to do this RP. Fire Emblem RP sounds like a fantastic idea. I'll start drafting up a CS now.

[Penultimate_Pi]

Meh. Since I'm not consistently active during the weekdays, I'll go with my 'knight with a higher purpose' option, and leave the Lord for someone more active than I.

I've have a sheet up in a moment.

[ruler710]

Name: Kalte
Appearance:
Apparent Age: Very early twenties
Gender: Male
Nation: Raised in Grado. Born in Carcino.
Class: Mercenary
Weapon Mastery: Sword: D
Level: 4

Background: Born in Carcino, Kalte traveled with an old merchant, Larkson, as long as he could remember. From a young age business man brought Kalte from place to place all over the continent, while Kalte wasn't sure if he even had any real relation to the man. However he didn't complain, Larkson acted as a father figure to him, showing him beautiful sights and teaching him many things. Kalte enjoyed his time on the road and holds the precious memories dearly to his heart. However during the their travels in Grado, Larkson's age began to wear on him and it wasn't long before he fell ill. He entrusted Kalte with what little fortune he had left and told Kalte, now a teenager, to find his way to the Capital and enlist in the military, as Grado's Emperor would likely never turn down an able young man.
So Taking the advice Kalte made his way to Grado's Capital. After finding his way to the castle. He begged and pleaded to be enlisted. Eventually he came in contact with Garric, a prominent Sword Master, of the Grado military, or what remains of it. Garric saw Kalte and agreed to take him on as his squire. Kalte spent many years enduring Garric's rigorous training. It was very apparent why Grado was once such a strong nations as the training he endured would surely break the will of most men. However the fruits of his labor paid off and he eventually graduated. He had grown into quite the strong warrior, not many his age could match him, due to his strong master.
Now Kalte had become a mercenary of sorts. Though he is very fond of the Grado Empire. He mostly would travel and assist villages with minor problems that didn't require full military attention. That way he still served the military. He acted more like an agent than a mercenary in those regards. His ties to the Grado Empire is what led him to be in the Castle when Jehanna attacked. He was there telling his master what about his travels, but was quick to take up a blade to the attackers.

Plot-Susceptive: Yes, that's the most important part.
Equipment and Items:
-Iron Blade
-Vulnerary

Personality: Very strong willed and calm. Though he may seem rather careless and reckless since he likes to take the frontline, his master however taught him to always have a backup plan. Loves to spar and practice his swordsmanship. In practice fights and everyday life he often acts a little carefree and jokingly, but will get serious in the face of real danger.

Ability Assessment: Kalte is very strong and skilled with a blade, as Garric's training pushed the human body's limits to the extreme. Overall he is rather well-rounded in most skills because of his masters style of training. However his knowledge of magic and defending from it is very limited. Despite the mages and shaman at Grado he never actually fought magic users before. So it's his main weakness as most weren't too fond of training with him, and when they did, they hardly went all out. Kalte's main abilities are his offensive capabilities. His skill and strength allow him to hit the sweet spots and with a lot of force. Being on the frontlines he can take damage, but he prefers to strike first. Especially against mages as he is not too fond of catching on fire.

Quirks/Talents/Aspirations/Other:
-Quite the haggler after watching his foster father, Larkson, haggle as a merchant.
-Favorite weapon is the the sword. He want's to become talented enough to take on even skilled lance users some day.
-Enjoys travelling and camping under the stars. Also loves music and dancing as he was surrounded by it at a young age. Has a habit of humming tunes while walking and practicing.
-Magic really freaks him out, he doesn't understand it at all. In combat he doesn't mind as long as it's not pointed at him, but it still gives him an uneasy feeling.
-Loves finding treasures and listening to old legends and tales, especially those about treasure.

R-button Summarization: A strong-willed Swordsman his master can be proud of.

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Since you seemed fairly open to NPC creation, I made a Sword Master if you don't mind. I don't have many plans for him IC wise besides his existence for character development and background. Though I have idea's of what to do with him if you want help thinking of any.

[Harbringer]

Meh. Since I'm not consistently active during the weekdays, I'll go with my 'knight with a higher purpose' option, and leave the Lord for someone more active than I.

I've have a sheet up in a moment.

@Penultimate_Pi

Sweet. Archibald has a meat shield.

[Penultimate_Pi]

Name: Griswal

Appearance:

Ignore the obvious axe.

Apparent Age: Middle-Aged
Gender: Male
Nation: Grado
Class: Knight
Weapon Mastery: C
Level: 4
Background:
Griswal hails from a standing line of once-famed knights within the Grado military. There was previously some element of prestige to be had within the family, even harkening back to Grado's ancient lords. Such things have dwindled to but a speck in the wake of Grado's disaster - yet, still, they live on to serve proudly. As true to the nation's role in the safety of the Fire Emblem, Griswal as a soldier was raised and trained in sturdy defense. Employed as a guard for Grado Keep in the face of the nation's dwindling military, Griswal saw little battle against anything beyond the now-common monsters of Magvel.

During Jehanna's call to war, Griswal was deliberately held back from combat, fearing that any front-line battle could not be won in the long run. Surely enough, Jehanna brought the fight to the capital within days. When it was decided the Fire Emblem was no longer safe here, Griswal was one of the first volunteered for its escort by none other than General Nero, his superior. While Griswal himself found no reason to refuse, he would only later realize the consequences of this...

Personality:
A gruff, but respectful individual. He talks and thinks with the hard, confident tones expected of a knight of his caliber. While prideful of his prowess in combat, Griswal is not quick to anger nor easy to turn to violence, and would much sooner berate someone else for seeing excessive gore or death as a solution. He's also something of a stoic when it comes to emotion, and doesn't find himself pursuing things like romance, vengeance or adventure.

Griswal has been rendered somewhat cynical and sullen by Jehanna's waging of war over the Fire Emblem. The very mention of these occurrences can lapse him into this foul attitude, and bring with it a lot of pain. However, Griswal remains ferociously serious of his role as a protector knight, and would do his very best to protect his trusted allies and innocents. Above all, Griswal is a sworn guardian of the Fire Emblem, bearing his armor and crest with dignity in spite of the hateful men and ruthless creatures who would bear down on him for it.

Plot-Susceptive: Yes.

Equipment / Items: Iron Lance, Vulnerary

R-button Summarization: A proud knight of Grado heritage. Stoic, but empowered.

[Draconfound]

Since Habit is the highest level and would be very conspicuous sneaking into the palace during the middle of an invasion, I'm wondering if maybe he should join them in a later level? I'm not sure, though. Otherwise, I'd be fine with lowering his level to 4 or 3

[PlatinumSkink]

@Harbringer
Alright, then. You had mentions that sounded like there were many nobles of that man's kind, so it made me wonder what kind of land you intended Grado to be. But we can assume this being the case. ... Heh, your mention of placement makes me wonder if I haven't filled this place up with too much stuff... Haha... Oh, don't try to fight the bottom-right enemies, though, those guys are hopefully the LAST Jehannans you have to fight.

Archibald is accepted~

The cards was a kind of joke, really, just wanted to mention the quantity of NPCs back here that could want similar treatment. But... Hm. The fancy one is nice, but the clean one is probably the more efficient one. Hm. Heh. What do you others think?

@ruler710
Oh, wow. Suddenly showed up. Alright, then. Do I pronounce the e in Kalte?

Oooh? Going for the heavy blade? Well, that is entirely fine. Teh-heh. Yeah, the story checks out, it makes sense. Weak point being magic works too. Hm-hm.

... That R-button summarization feels a little bolstering. XD I mean, the summarizations tend to be neutral and try to be informative, yours feels like his teacher wrote it. A swordsman Grado can be proud of, huh. XD ... Alright, now to figure out a reason why you can go and your teacher won't. Shouldn't be too hard. XD

Kalte is accepted~

@Penultimate_Pi
Alright, the classical stoic knight, here, eh? Truly, this one is the character closest to being the one entrusted with the Fire Emblem among the characters currently presented. ... Yepp, not much more I can state here~ You'll likely be the oldest member of the player characters (appearance-wise, anyway), look after the kids, alright? XD

C-Mastery rank here too, eh? ... Eh, I'll assume he's done his fare share of getting more skilled with the extra amount of years he has on the others. XD

Griswal is accepted~

So now Grado has Swordmaster Garric and General Nero as well. ... Heh. Alright, then.

@Draconfound
... Wait, hold on... You skipped apparent age? ... ... ... HA! XD

As for level and joining later, completely up to you. I've already accepted him, and as a thief you're really already less physically intimidating than most of the others. In Fire Emblem, thieves sneak into battles all the time~ Of course, I'll accept if you wish to decrease his level. That is, as said, completely up to you.

... Alright, then. Lesse, now we have five characters. I know there are two who said they're working on characters, one who intends to join after coming back from a trip, two who have spoken about kinds of characters they want to play, several more who's claimed interest... It is starting to get somewhat many now. I should probably put a break here on random in-droppers to give those who first expressed interest to join in, since it appears this will be filling up otherwise. Hm, alrighto. Any arguments against this?

[PlatinumSkink]

@DAWNSTAR@vietmyke@Apollosarcher@71342@TheHangedMan@Eklispe@Melkor@Trainer N

I changed the topic-apply-thing to full. The above individuals may still apply with their characters because they've expressed interest. It would simply become too many should more individuals randomly drop in from nowhere now. XD In fact, should all make characters now, we'll be at thirteen. We'll see how things work out~

Of course, should we by any reason feel we need more characters later on, that's the beautiful thing with Fire Emblem. We just need to randomly find them in the next battlefield~! Just up with a new interest check, open the gates again and invite people~! Yupp~!

[Nightmare Bunny]

I should probably put a break here on random in-droppers to give those who first expressed interest to join in, since it appears this will be filling up otherwise. Hm, alrighto. Any arguments against this?

@PlatinumSkink

No arguments here! I was wondering… has anyone expressed an interest in playing the Lord that you said we needed (as per Fire Emblem tradition!)?

Also, @Harbringer, is there a difference in the ease of making the fancy version of those trading card thingies versus the simpler version? I kind of like the fancy version… it's, uh, prettier?

[PlatinumSkink]

No arguments here! I was wondering… has anyone expressed an interest in playing the Lord that you said we needed (as per Fire Emblem tradition!)?

@Nightmare Bunny

None yet! XD ... Do note, I won't actually force anyone to play Lord, or actually have a limit on amount of Lords (I mean, there's three in one game), I'll let people play what they want. If that means we have no Lord, then that's entirely fine.

Of those I've heard, there's one who's expressed interest in playing a female on the path to becoming a Swordmaster (Myrmidon? Haha), one who's suggested the possibility of that person playing a human from Caer Pelyn, one who's expressed an idea of a Manakete and one who's asked if it is possible to play a male Pegasus Trainee, to which I answered "If you want to be a super-special snowflake!". 'Cause apparently it is possible, just absurdly rare.

Of course, none of those HAVE to make that if they change their minds, I'm just stating it so that people might take it into account. If they change their minds due to any reason, feel free to inform me. Haha.

[Nightmare Bunny]

<Snipped quote by Nightmare Bunny>
those I've heard, there's one who's expressed interest in playing a female on the path to becoming a Swordmaster (Myrmidon? Haha), one who's expressed an idea of a Manakete and one who's asked if it is possible to play a male Pegasus Trainee, to which I answered "If you want to be a super-special snowflake!". 'Cause apparently it is possible, just absurdly rare.

@PlatinumSkink

Yes! Calico will no longer be the only girl!

*dance dance dance dance*