Andreyich

Heroes of Might and Magic: Defying the Gravekeep

Breathing. The sense of breathing would be the first thing to return to young Brandon, and soon all the senses related to it. The air was humid, or on second thought smokey would be a better description; clearly something was burning. As the sense of smell returned the nobleman would get the feeling that much of what was in the air was incense, but many fouler smells yet indistinguishable would also fill his nostrils. The lad was lying on some sort of steps, the cold and somewhat wet stone digging into his skin. A ghastly susurration would fill his ears and upon opening his eyes it would seem to be coming from the smoke about him. Coils of it would form shapes that in the first moments of consciousness would easily be mistaken for faces or skulls both proper and mutilated, malformed. It was a crypt of some sort, a great many steps leading to a rectangular block of stone that may have been a platform for embalming, or perhaps a coffin, or maybe an altar of some sort. Regardless of what it was, a trail of sickly black blood along the steps leading to the Unicorn would be simply evidence that he had fallen and rolled off of it.

Through a strange green lens Brandon now had it would be easy to see the room was poorly lit by the few candles in it, the globs of filthy wax appearing to only accent the darkness rather than provide light. The thing that really allowed him to see was a flame spreading across many books and corpses in the building, the fire yet too small to reach the banners across the walls. It was slow, the occasional fiery bursts of corpses' gases or fats not doing enough to counteract the cold and wetness of rot and blood. The stench was terrible, worse than anything the Lordling would have previously dealt with and yet somehow bearable. If he chose to stand up rather than rest the many pains he would sense across his body, it would be clear that all witnessed to this moment was more or less the full extent of the building. The only new thing revealed would be the exit, a very long thing from which some helping light both natural and not would come. If he paid attention, the noble would hear voices and the clank of plate armour coming from there (albeit getting further and further away).

Though the fire was spreading slowly - almost leisurely in fact - there was an ever so slight sense of urgency given by a rumble from below. It didn't signal that the structure was going to collapse soon, but rather that there would soon be bigger rumbles that would signal this. As the lad would now have to choose what he would do next, memories would start to flutter into his mind.

Heroes of Might and Magic: Defying the Gravekeep

After the fourth Eclipse peace reigned on Ashan the world was different. The change in era might lead one to believe that a peace of sorts of acheieved, but it was only a different kind of violence. Skeins of fate are tugged threatening to unravel the whole loom. A great burden falls upon the shoulders of a young nobleman fallen long before his due, his new life within death given purpose by both his fractured memories and a strange, spectral advisor. But neither of these truly let the boy know of the great fiend he must slay for the sake of all Ashan; luckily for the peoples of the world, the universe will force him down this path regardless.

Heroes of Might and Magic: Defying the Gravekeep

Placeholder for me and @Typical

Andy's hunt for kin-spirit dreggs

StarCraft: New Beginning

The local fellow was leading them deeper and deeper into the scrapyard, and every so often Paul had to make sure to mark where they had gone on his HUD because quite frankly he was getting very, very lost. He was just glad for his mask and helmet, otherwise he'd be disoriented to all hell and probably would just fall and give up without guidance. Really, he wondered how all these junker people hadn't yet dropped dead from all the nastiness of the area; smoke and smog, debris, crime.

Looking to Maya, the junker shrugged. "Depends, depends, depends. Cutting the cloaking unit from the wraith is just a few credits nothing hard. Installing it on a destroyer though? Now that's tricky business. For example we could make it simply cover the active decks, and if you seal and deactivate all other parts of the vessel to remove their signature it'll work perfectly against most standard scanners outside of the heavy duty buggers on science vessels and such, but the parts of the ship not covered are going to be still technically visible to the naked eye. Of course with the zerg not a big deal any more you don't have to worry much about visual report, but its still a bit of a threat." The fellow turned into a junction of several gutted ships.

"You can also have the cloaking field cover your whole vessel, that'll be mighty expensive of course depending on exactly how big of a destroyer you pick." to demonstrate, he pointed out two of said vessels side by side: one was very small, little more than an engine, a single laser battery, a cargo bay and a command deck with all the other parts of the ship cut off. Beside it was almost a pristine ship covered in all sorts of different armaments, with many cargo holds, reinforced plating, scanners, and many more accessories & upgrades. "But regardless of how big, there's a problem with powering the whole surface area. A wraith's cloaking system is designed for something the size and shape of a wraith. To cloak a whole ship that isn't a wraith will mean you exhaust it very fast if you do it completely. You can try to save some energy but that will incur the risk of little flickers in the cloak. Statistically improbable and all that, but you won't be happy when it happens."

Sitting down on a pile off rubbish the junker crossed his arms. "Of course, you can chop out the cloak module from a dozen wraiths and then be sure any ship is wholly cloaked, although then comes the problem that at a certain point of a ship's size cloaking is useless, they can see the shimmer of the field. With a destroyer you won't run into that, but anything bigger and you certainly will."

It was a long monologue, but the local bastard sold each option very enticingly. "I think just having one to apply to the command deck and engines will work, all other systems can be sealed and shut off if we don't want to be detected. Stealth is better used to avoid fights than to win them."

The Division | Mao Mao & Andreyich

---

LINCOLN TUNNEL // HUDSON YARDS

Badger didn't waste any time following Firefly outside. He winced a few tears from his eyes as the sun momentarily blinded him, but just as quickly as he adjusted to the darker interior he adjusted to the outdoor lighting. Listening to the orders from command Don nodded, taking out his M4 now that they were outside and flicking it to single fire. The announcement that another team being sent to take care of the checkpoint mollified the only concern that Don had, and so he nodded with renewed dedication to this new objective.

With the map Bates pulled out Don knew that the man had a head start on figuring out a path and so he didn't really bother trying to do likewise, instead kneeling down and taking a look at the scene through the optics of his rifle. He hadn't seen anybody on the way here, but he never heard of anybody dying of caution. Dying to people you didn't know were there because you forgot to do a second sweep of a place happened very often, on the other hand. When his counterpart came up with a route Hayes simply nodded and stood up. "I'm easy, and I already had a long rest before I made my way here I'm good to go. Lead the way." he said, gesturing with his left hand.

Donald kept quiet on the way through the highway, and although he wasn't quite expecting what he came upon with his comrade it wasn't particularly surprising either. This line of thought was very quickly interrupted when the distinct report of firearms was heard, and much like his partner the warrior went for cover. Experience from SWAT told the man that most civilian cars were unreliable cover with most rifle and even a good chunk of pistol bullets easily going through their doors and trunks, and so instead a heavier truck was sought out. Peeking out revealed that these men were just police officers with service pistols however, which cars would more or less stop, not to mention the plate carriers of the duo. The rifles of the agents however would more than readily go through any civilian cars, which in addition to the other advantages of the agents made any sort of confrontation a done deal more or less.

These were cops though, and they weren't even SWAT officers. Blasting random people wasn't their duty, however this wasn't the time and the place to be confronting them, and Don started to say "wait" but he was too late. "Fuck." was all he could say, rubbing his forehead wearily. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." he muttered again, the expletives somehow calming. It was rather suspicious that a man in actual military gear was not believed when he said he was military, though. Something was really fishy here and quite frankly Don was suspecting these people were only impersonating law enforcement officers — the only evidence to the contrary was that they used the term "officer" between each other before they knew the SHD Agents were present.

"Hold on, I'll flank them, I'll let you know when I'm in position. Tell me if you think it's going to shit, over." Don communicated, before crouching down and doing the closest thing he could to a run whilst keeping his head below the level of the cars. Ideally he wanted to make it behind the two NYPD Officers but even being at the side to insure he had the drop on them with his rifle would really be enough given it seemed these were the only two present. He just hoped Firefly would be able to diffuse the situation, or at least keep the cops talking long enough for him to be in position to take them out with two quick taps on the trigger. He'd probably aim for their thighs or stomach depending the urgency of the situation, neither shot instantly lethal allowing for a quick questioning of the men but the latter being eventually mortal as blood loss, shock, and other complications soon got to you. Well, at least this was a heroic story he'd be able to tell the grandkids, of how he saved some poor citizen from being executed by rogue police officers in this trying time. With the way things were going Badger reckoned there'd be quite a lot more before things got better though, and he really didn't believe this little act of heroism would pay off when there was a more urgent objective. He'd have to raise his concerns with Bates when they were out of a volatile scenario later.

Ask an Admin, v2.

<Snipped quote by Skullwombat>
Post it. If it gets personal and petty/starts breaking site rules a site mod will close it or delete it or both. I have a RL I desperately need to get back to so it probably won't be me. But understand I have people asking me to stop THIS thread. So I don't think it's prophecy to say it probably won't last long. But who knows? Try it.

@Ruby

If people don't like the thread they're welcome not to view it. Shutting it down because a fraction of the site users don't know how to close a tab is counterintuitive. To do so would be a final and definitive proof that critique is punished, transparency is forbidden, questions cannot be asked.

Ask an Admin, v2.

<Snipped quote by Andreyich>

If people want to troll, they're going to find a way to do so; we've seen that from RPGO to the status bar.

Beyond that, posting in good faith is a requirement of this thread, so troll responses, even if there's a point behind them, are removed.

@LegendBegins

Okay but that's not what was discussed. The point of this site is roleplay, and nobody in question right now ever hurt those fundamentals. People went to the status bar because it seems other methods have failed (largely on account of being deleted for no reason lol) and it reaches the largest amount of people without shitting up IC. Banning people for OOC/Meta critique on the other hand is actually very damaging to the fundamental of the site: roleplay. There is evidently a lot more trolling from the people with ban privileges than the people without.

And pardon me but how does:

This entire post is crap. I've never spoken to you before so I'm guessing the people banned were your friends and you're angry about it. Great reason to harass someone you've never spoken to.

or:

You just had an opinion that criticized the moderators.
Not what the purpose of this thread is for but I don't see any bans coming at you for this post, so...

or my personal favourite:

Cool. Nice version of reality

qualify as good faith? To me it seems like most people were only following the tone set by this (and that's just the first page), and to remove posts for following the example set by moderation seems nonsensical at the very least.

Ask an Admin, v2.

<Snipped quote by Andreyich>

No, what was removed was [citation needed], which wasn't a question, nor was it constructive. If you had asked the above instead, it wouldn't have been removed.

@LegendBegins

Going by the vast majority of posts by the creator of the thread here I can't see how being constructive or being a question/answer is a prerequisite of staying up, given the vast majority are rude, one-liner deflections rather than actual answers. I also don't really see how it was neither a question nor constructive, but alright, I'll humour you now that the question is "properly asked". Where are the proofs?