The Accomplished

[Roleplayer001]

Here you go you scurvy dogs!

There are usually several basic fantasy RP's going: sword and sorcery type, if you will.

One thing I don't usually see is the characters being those who are at the peak of their power. The middle aged and satisfied characters who are among the top 10 in their class. The sort of people who have already gotten the gold, the glory, and the girl. The ones that people try to get out of retirement to solve their problem.

I think we should do a sword and sorcery type RP focused on these characters.

Possbile Plot

Firstly, I was planning on the RP being more character based than anything else. Chances are that our characters would have run into eachother and have previous relations of all sorts. After about a decade of retirement, how do you handle those? If your family is threatened, do you betray old comrades? After all the CS are put in, I will send a PM to each player about their relations with the others based on the character sheets. You may receive directly contradictory information.

Barebones of the Plot

Initially, people convinced themselves that this was just an exceptionally cold year. The snow remained on the ground for three months rather than the normal one. Still, this must have happened before. There would be food shortages, but most people should survive. The blizzards were more of an annoyance than anything.

The tropical regions that were still able to grow food increased their prices dramatically, taking advantage of the decreased supply in the market. While the lower nobility were suffering, the peasants were hungry.

However, when three months turned into five and crops could not be sown during any of the months that normally occupy spring, riots began. Rumors of invasion from the Northern Kings into the Southern Lands were starting to spread. These rumors were false. There was no possible way a feudal monarch could afford to launch an invasion and at the same time keep the growing rebellions in their own lands down. The grain of truth was that those cultures who were used to movement had started planning to, Cheifs and Khans alike starting to head to greener pastures with destruction in their wake.

Six months in, a letter was sent to all the sovereigns and nobles of the continent. Three great powers had unleashed a combination of divine might and genius magic to place the world under their control. While previously rivals, they had constructed plans to work together the decade before. Additionally, they also agreed to offer demands that were 'reasonable' so that there was a chance that the demands would actually be accepted with minimal resistance. This was done to ensure the possibility of people rebelling in their favor.

Hibernas, Dragon God of Ice
Guildamarch, Amour of a Thousand Winters
Nixla, Witch of Endless Snow

Their demands to lift the spell were as follows:
-1 Percent of fit men and women to be gifted as slaves each year.
-Expansion of personal territory.
-A Tithe as a gift to their new overlords.
-Hostages from every royal family to be kept as assurance of their new subjects loyalty.

Facing growing rebellion, a month later the monarchs of the world begged the heroes and legends that still walked the earth to answer their call for aid. Unable to afford any major offensive operation, this group would be their only chance at removing this problem and avoiding this settlement.

Possible Party

[gloriousinfamy]

I'm interested. What ideas do you have to lure out the top, former-adventurers from retirement?

[RyanTadashi]

I would be super down for this!

[Hank]

I'm interested. What ideas do you have to lure out the top, former-adventurers from retirement?

@gloriousinfamy

I have the same question. What kind of problem are our characters going to face?

[Roleplayer001]

Firstly, I was planning on the RP being more character based than anything else. Chances are that our characters would have run into eachother and have previous relations of all sorts. After about a decade of retirement, how do you handle those? If your family is threatened, do you betray old comrades? After all the CS are put in, I will send a PM to each player about their relations with the others based on the character sheets. You may receive directly contradictory information.

There are still some undecided things: humans only or all fantasy races, strength of magic in the universe, ect. I will let you decide that.

Barebones of the Plot

Initially, people convinced themselves that this was just an exceptionally cold year. The snow remained on the ground for three months rather than the normal one. Still, this must have happened before. There would be food shortages, but most people should survive. The blizzards were more of an annoyance than anything.

The tropical regions that were still able to grow food increased their prices dramatically, taking advantage of the decreased supply in the market. While the lower nobility were suffering, the peasants were hungry.

However, when three months turned into five and crops could not be sown during any of the months that normally occupy spring, riots began. Rumors of invasion from the Northern Kings into the Southern Lands were starting to spread. These rumors were false. There was no possible way a feudal monarch could afford to launch an invasion and at the same time keep the growing rebellions in their own lands down. The grain of truth was that those cultures who were used to movement had started planning to, Cheifs and Khans alike starting to head to greener pastures with destruction in their wake.

Six months in, a letter was sent to all the sovereigns and nobles of the continent. Three great powers had unleashed a combination of divine might and genius magic to place the world under their control. While previously rivals, they had constructed plans to work together the decade before. Additionally, they also agreed to offer demands that were 'reasonable' so that there was a chance that the demands would actually be accepted with minimal resistance. This was done to ensure the possibility of people rebelling in their favor.

Hibernas, Dragon God of Ice
Guildamarch, Amour of a Thousand Winters
Nixla, Witch of Endless Snow

Their demands to lift the spell were as follows:
-1 Percent of fit men and women to be gifted as slaves each year.
-Expansion of personal territory.
-A Tithe as a gift to their new overlords.
-Hostages from every royal family to be kept as assurance of their new subjects loyalty.

Facing growing rebellion, a month later the monarchs of the world begged the heroes and legends that still walked the earth to answer their call for aid. Unable to afford any major offensive operation, this group would be their only chance at removing this problem and avoiding this settlement.

[ThinkingInk]

I am very interested! I cannot wait to watch this develop further.

[McHaggis]

.

[Roleplayer001]

Now that we have some interest I'd like to ask a question or two:

1. Elves, Dwarves, ect. or just humans?
2. How common should magical power be? Note that this wouldn't affect the powers of our actual party, as we would be the guys who have the world's three strongest mages anyways.

[McHaggis]

.

[ThinkingInk]

1. I love the diversity of multiple races and can't see it affecting gameplay much aside from cool descriptions of people and more fun names to call each other.

2. I'm for uncommon magic, even seen as frightening in some places, or evil. It's fun to work with environments like that. As long as it doesn't diminish non-magic users in the world.

I'm too excited for this game.

[Hank]

1. Multiple races. Variety is the spice of life.

2. Magic generally works better as an uncommon phenomenon, in my opinion, so I side with @ThinkingInk and @McHaggis on this one.

[Deadnaut]

I'd be interested.

[Hunter of Dreams]

I've been following this for a couple days and think it sounds quite compelling. So I may be interested as well. . . oh who am I kidding, strike the 'may', I am interested. Now if I can keep up with what is considered Advanced, that is the question. :)

Quick question. I know this is for characters that are already well known and secure in their powers/positions. But I am wondering if there would be any younger characters being brought along, just to add a bit of variety and perhaps some twists here and there. (You know, bumbling, know-it-all youths stumbling around inadvertently creating havoc that their mentors have to clean up. No big deal interrupting their work, after all, they're just currently occupied with trying to save the world!)

[gloriousinfamy]

1. Lots of races. The more the merrier or more conflict, which is fun.
2. Uncommonish? I like the idea of areas with high magical power, like Mage cities. Likewise, there could be other areas that have no magic at all but have expert craftsmen or warriors.

Also, @Hunter of Dreams has a good point. Most uber-powered mages tend to have apprentices or scribes to assist with them. It would make sense if a few underlings tagged along with the mages.

[Dead Cruiser]

I could be interested in this. I need an advanced RP to remind me that there is good in the world.

Anyway, I concur with above thoughts regarding the queries. I have a question of my own though: what if I were to offer a sort of endgame villain, an either retired or deposed (or so he has them think) dark lord that has come to join the heroes out of mutual interest in the current villains being eliminated. Could put an interesting spin on the party dynamics.

[Roleplayer001]

So the poll results:
1. Dwarves, Elves, Angels, Vampires, ect. hop along! You're already overpowered by any conventional standard so limitations are pretty low. Just don't be a literal god.
2. Magic is normally considered rare, granted to maybe 1 in a thousand among the humans in a typical area. Of Course, there will be one or two academy cities. I already have an idea for balancing this against "might", so magic won't be 'overpowered' by our parties standards.

@Everyone- I'm going to assume a lot of you have an idea of the sort of character you want, and I don't feel like constructing a lot of lore to only have a fifteenth of it be used. So if you can give a short description of your character like - HUMAN FIRE DRAGON RIDER LORD - it would be greatly appreciated. If you already wanna build/modify a Character Sheet go ahead - we're in the advanced section, I trust you guys know the gist. Just make sure your bio is what the world would know about you. If you see a spot in someone else's CS that you'd like to throw yourself in, be reasonable about it but I encourage you to. If your history and the world's knowledge are completely off, then send me a PM with your 'true' history

@Hunter of Dreams@gloriousinfamyI understand your query. At this point, most of our heroes would have a small retinue of loyal troops (5-30) they could call up and possibly an apprentice. Our guys certainly aren't going to have intentions of roughing it and will probably do what lords historically did and bring along pavilions and shit. Of course, more ranger esque heroes may choose to rough it anyways.

If you are willing to dual character, so long as your apprentice/mount/member belonged to another character I'd be up for it. If you aren't willing to, I'll have to wait and see how many CSs come in. However, if you are not used to the advanced standard of roleplay, then I advise you do not dual character. I'm also okay if that apprentice is related to your character however.

@Dead CruiserA dark lord would be somebody in this party to start with. So would necromancers, demons, and anyone else who doesn't want the world to become an icy wasteland. One of this themes of this RP is dealing with past conflict. How can you team up with someone who has killed your family? The only reason why our party is together is because these threats are on the level of Minor Gods.

[Roleplayer001]

A bit of lore

Magic

Magic is fairly rare in this universe. Among a standard human medieval kingdom, only one in a thousand would be born with the gift. Some others can find tomes that allow them to achieve it and have it granted upon themselves. Some places and peoples have a very high concentration of it.

There are four major categories of magic wielders. The higher up the list, the more divinity interferes with the ability for it to be wielded. People can wield multiple types of magic.
Mages - use mana derived from their soul in order to wield power created by oneself. Due to the limitations on a mortal body, this is best used for smaller spells. It's main benefit however is that your personal mana is completely under your control.
Wizards - use the power derived from the universe, or the environment. The more specific the environment, the safer and more efficient the power is. So for example, there could be a wizard of the Desert who would gain power based on the health of the desert. Wizards tend to make large territorial claims.
Sorcerers - Sacrifice their mana to another being (usually not in the same plane of existence, otherwise the results can be… confusing) in order to gain access to their strength. While magic is sacrificed to gain access to these spells, the result can come in either Divine or Magic form depending on the source of the spell. While powerful, it takes time to cast, has a limited number of options for modification, and if casted incorrectly will allow that being to possibly possess your soul. youtube.com/watch?v=ecbTsBMeBy8
Arcanists - tend to use items and things like magic circles and runes to produce spells. High level arcanists tend to be able to summon a magic circle with their own mana, but this is a high level technique and is very temporary. Is one of the ways to enchant an item. Arcanists are able to modify an arcane item's original purpose using their mana, which allows them to use things like staves more effectively. Also it allows them to do things like open magic doors by 'hacking' them.

[The New Yorker]

Well, well. This is interesting.

What do you think about a Drow Elf Master Alchemist? Sound reasonable?

[Dead Cruiser]

Alright, I have some ideas.

How does the first vampire sound? As in, the literal progenitor of the vampire race.

[The New Yorker]

Alright, I have some ideas.

How does the first vampire sound? As in, the literal progenitor of the vampire race.

@Dead Cruiser

I always saw Vampirism as more of a medical condition than a race or ethnicity.