Bazmund

ꇙ ꒤ ꋊ ꋪ ꒤ ꋊ ꋊ ꏂ ꋪ ꇙ

@LordOfTheNight Would Adam make more sense as a newbie or a veteran?

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate [Currently Accepting!]

Alright folks, we have a discord server. When you join, use the @Baran (Bazmund) line to get my attention and I’ll add you to this RP’s subcategory.

discord.gg/B2Feza

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate [Currently Accepting!]

@Briza I don't particularly mind and I won't ban anything, but the RP as a whole has the theme of realism and realistic consequences; your characters are magicians, and therefore they're innately powerful and can represent a significant threat to those they stand against - but you're not anime characters at all, and this definitely isn't going to play out like an anime. If you get shot, you get shot - and so on.

To that end, use whatever picture you like, but ideally reflect a real person with it and try to help us imagine your character as a real person.

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate [Currently Accepting!]

Hey folks, I just wanted to say thank you for the interest you've all shown so far. I'm looking forward a whole damn lot to seeing the finished products of the CSes we already have on the thread, and I'm going to tailor the specifics of the planned plot to our party once they're fully selected.

Speaking of which, I should mention at this point that I do actually have someone who's gonna help with CS feedback and acceptance - namely Stitches, who's already submitted a sheet that I'm going to be reviewing properly hopefully later tonight if I get the time. I'll add this to the OOC later on too, hopefully - just need to get some studying done first.

Again, thanks so much for your enthusiasm, it's so good to have you all here!

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate [Currently Accepting!]

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- The Story Begins -

Chapters and Index

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Chapter 1;

A Rude Awakening

Chapter 1

With the first dawn of 2020 there came a wave of Violet light, and a new wave of mages - the Fifth Generation, they would be called. This hour marks the turning of the page into the new year - and so too, the beginning of their story.

The FOE were, as they always are, quick to act; rolling roadblocks were set up, the country going into martial law while the agents of the enemy combed the population for magicians or sympathisers, kidnapping the former and executing the latter on the spot. In the new world, magic is treason, and treason means death.

Our protagonists, most of them magicians themselves, were awoken amongst this chaos to the smell of burning and a sense of horror as the truth uncoiled in the back of their minds and smiled grimly at them. Most of them had never considered that they might one day bear the stigma of awakening, many of them had been behind FOE when they started rounding the others up and disappearing them - but all of them were on the run.

The time is 03:00 hours. It is the deep of the night, the bed of stars in the skies above you a facade below which monsters walk. In the background you can already hear gunshots, screaming, and the clatter of batons on riot shields; whether these things are truly happening near you or if the severity of it simply makes itself heard from a distance, you cannot tell. The world is coming undone, like silk thread picked from the seam of the universe, and you are at the end of it. It is beginning, but it feels as if it has been over for a long time now.

You are roused from this reverie, eventually, by the buzzing of your phone.

You have a text.

"We don't have time to talk right now, FOE will be inside your home within ten minutes. We know who you are and what you are, and we want to help."

"Leave through the back door, don't wake anyone up. Cross two streets to the west. Our people will find you and get you to safety. Please let us help you, you don't deserve what they're going to do to you."

"Godspeed."

" - V. U. "

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate [Currently Accepting!]

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Leadership

The Council

John

Peter

Janine

Nitya

Petra

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Membership

Simon Penrose

Simon Penrose

Basics

Name: Simon Penrose
Age: 24
Gender: Male
Height/Weight: 5"9 / 63kg
(Former) Occupation: Masters Student in Geography and Environmental Sustainability / US Army Reserve Officer Cadet
Appearance: Simon is a reserved, perceptive, and slightly nervous looking young man, with mellow brown eyes and a tendency to cross his arms when he's talking. Despite this, there's a certain sharpness to the man that comes across in how he holds himself, how his body moves when he's listening to people talk. It's easy to underestimate him.

Mike Stafford

Mike Stafford

Basics

Name: Michael Stafford
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Height/Weight: 5"10, 80kg
(Former) Occupation: Unknown
Appearance: Miles Honeywell stands at 5"10, lithely and powerfully built, with shoulders of average width. His skin is fair and largely unblemished apart from the occasional freckle and some minor acne scars on the left side of his jaw. His eyes are greyish and unintricate, without deformity nor unusual beauty. His hair is brown, neither dark enough to be remarkable nor light enough to be blonde. His smile is pleasant, but not stunning. His teeth are straight, but not perfect. There is little about him that is particularly memorable - he is no more than another face among billions.

Mark Zuckowitz

Basics

Name: Mark Zuckowitz
Age: 27
Gender: Male
Height/Weight: 5”8 / 80kg
(Former) Occupation: Gambling store worker / Drug Trafficker
Appearance: Mark is a stocky, muscular man, with oddly glossy dirty brown hair and slightly sunken eyes. His eyes are dark hazel, hard and unforgiving, perceptive and searching. He usually comes across as slightly shorter than he actually is on account of his tendency to slouch, and can usually be found wearing a dull hoodie, jeans, and a parka.

Lt. Mendez

Lt. Mira Mendez

Basics

Name: Mira Mendez
Age: 39
Gender: Female
Height/Weight: 5”9 / 85kg
(Former) Occupation: State Police Officer
Appearance: Mira Mendez is a practical, imposing woman, with broad shoulders and powerful musculature. Her face is framed by dark, thick hair, and marked by long lashes and thick eyebrows. Her lips are thin and her face is angular, forehead creased from frowns, and skin tan with the stroke of the sun. Her eyes are a deep and warm brown, and will occasionally belie a kindness that she rarely has opportunity to show any more. Normally she wears her uniform - which is generic and regulation even by police standards - and has little else on her clothing to mark her out, barring a gold crucifix worn on a silver chain about her neck, usually tucked into her shirt.

Zack Saint

Zack Saint

Basics

Name: Zachary St. Levin
Age: 19
Gender: Male
Height/Weight: 6”2 / 70kg
(Former) Occupation: Unprofessional Trouble Maker
Appearance: Zack is a tall, gangly, slightly acne-ridden anarchist punk. He likes leather jackets with spikes on them, highly styled unconventional hairdos, and ripped jeans. He’s got a sallow sort of face, with bags under his eyes and ears slightly too big for his face.

Samuel Thompson

Basics

Name:
Age:
Gender:
Height/Weight:
(Former) Occupation:
Appearance:

Anastasia Shevchenko

Basics

Name:
Age:
Gender:
Height/Weight:
(Former) Occupation:
Appearance:

Billy Ray McKinley

Basics

Name: Billy Ray McKinley
Age: 32
Gender: Male
Height/Weight: 5”9 / 72kg
(Former) Occupation: Mechanic - Civilian and HGVs
Appearance: Billy Ray is a fairly small seeming man, with muted expressions and eyes that seem to be trying to avoid drawing attention. His complexion is enhanced by a couple of well distinguished freckles on his cheeks, and his teeth are straight and well taken care of. He’s not overly broad, not impeccably toned, and not really all that strong looking - but it’s obvious enough that he works a job involving manual labour, and that he does exercise often even if it’s more a part of his natural lifestyle than for fitness in particular. He normally wears an olive green body warmer over a shirt and grey jeans.

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Affiliates, and Others

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Memorial Wall

Sexton Goodall

Sexton Goodall

January 3rd, 2020

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"He was a sour, moody, unpleasant bastard. Always had my back. I'm gonna miss you a lot, Sax. - Míra"

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Leadership

The Director of Operations

Harrison Redmond

Basics

Name: Harrison A. Redmond
Age: 67
Gender: Male
Height/Weight: 5”10 // 85kg
Occupation: FOE Director, previously a member of the FBI (details unknown)
Appearance:

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Membership

Special Agents

Ground Troops

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Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate [Currently Accepting!]

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- Timeline -

The history of our History

2016

• January 1st
  
  • With the first sunrise of the new year, a wave of violet light sweeps the globe, touching each country as the light of the sun meets the land. It is invisible to cameras and doesn't disturb wildlife - only mankind notices, and they see the purplish light even in their dreams when they're not awake. This event becomes known as the Violet Dawn.
  • Immediately, governments enforce a coerced silence on media corporations and try to stifle the news while their intelligence agencies figure out what exactly happened.
• January 3rd
  
  • A significant portion of the world’s population suddenly manifest magical abilities. The vast majority of these tragic individuals are either killed by the uncontrollable manifestation of their vast power, or driven irrevocably and unintelligibly insane - and are subsequently lethally subdued by riot police and government response.
  • Very few of what were eventually called The First Wave were taken alive; those that were, disappeared completely. It is likely that their citizenships were revoked, and that they remained in state custody until their deaths in captivity.
  • It is unknown if any 1st Generation Mages survive in the wild, but estimates are that less than a handful possibly could - and that less than a half could still possibly be serviceably sane. The events of this period will come to be known, one day, as the first World Wide Witchhunt.

2017

• January 1st
  
  • It happens again. Like a flashback to a nightmare, the public find themselves once again the subject of a wave of Violet light, washing over them like an occult tide with the rising of the sun. The world watches in horror… and waits in dread.
• January 3rd
  
  • The Second Wave awaken, and much like the first one they are either so wildly out of control of their powers that they are killed by them, publicly, or they are mentally destroyed by the weight of their new abilities. The government respond as they did before - with gunfire and Witchhunts. The position of the agencies created to deal with The First Wave is now secure; these are the forefather agencies of the modern institutions dedicated to hunting magicians - and accordingly, the second World Wide Witchhunt commences. A few more magicians from this era survive the bloodshed, but not many. Never many.
• April 20th
  
  • The Stafford Act - informally known as the Inquisition act - is passed by the UK parliament and subsequently taken up by the European Parliament as well. It formalises the cancellation of Brexit and the beginning of global intelligence cooperation to counter the Magical Threat. Mages are not quite universally seen as an enemy of civilisation as a whole, yet, but the public are terrified.

2018

• January 1st-3rd
  
  • The Third Wave are expected to follow this year’s Violet Dawn by the FOE, and by the wider antimagic intelligence community - but they expected it to be different, more chaotic, more violent. The magicians of the Third Generation are instead like something more subtly deranged, like a failed experiment. For this reason, many of them survive, at least initially. Their hallucinations and delusions will eventually lead most of them to be captured nonetheless, but in the meantime they remain the most survivable Generation yet.
• February 4th
  
  • The disparate branches and divisions of existing national intelligence agencies - the FBI Unusual Affairs branch, the CIA’s Extraordinary Intelligence Committee, the NSA’s Paranormal Task Force, MI5’s Crowley Office… - are formally dissolved and recondensed into their own institutions of investigation, by almost unanimous votes in nearly every sovereign nation in the world. This is the birthday of the European Magical Defence Agency, with the birthday of the Federal Occult Enforcement group coming the next day on the 5th of February.
• September 24th
  
  • The Magician known as Cam, a talented and reasonably stable individual of the third generation, develops their abilities and is eventually able to identify individuals with latent magical potential. They immediately begin using this ability to try and find themselves some friends.
• December 25th
  
  • Cam succeeds in finding seven others who are due to awaken after the next Violet Dawn. Knowing that they will not be able to reveal themselves until they too have self-identified as Magicians, Cam puts measures in place to protect them, and waits for the Sunrise on New Year’s Morning.

2019

• January 1st-3rd
  
  • As is now the broadly accepted pattern, on New Year’s morning the world is once again bathed by the Violet Dawn, and once again another fraction of the population is awoken. This year’s magicians are the most stable yet, 90% or so of them remaining both bodily and mentally intact. Intelligence agencies scramble to capture them, using new - if primitive - magic-sensing devices developed covertly using captured mages to test on; they are moderately successful, but for the first time most of the awakened Fourth Generation remain free past the first month mark.
  • Cam is successful in liberating four of the seven - the FOE were already too close to the other three - and bringing them together in Brightwell, Illinois. This is where they will, in the coming weeks, become the founders of the Violet Underground.

2020

• January 1st
  
  • The Violet Dawn arrives once more.
• January 3rd
  
  • You Awaken as a part of the Fifth Generation.
  • At 03:03AM, on the third minute of the third hour of the third day of the year, you get a text from an unknown number, telling you that FOE will be knocking on your door in fifteen minutes, and that you need to leave your apartment by the back entrance and meet them in a nearby alleyway if you want to live. The text is brief, but apologetic - and you probably don’t have any better options anyway.

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Important Information

Hello, dear friends, and welcome to the world of Paradigm Shift. This is a roleplay where your character is a newly awakened magician, with no particular training or extensive background in magic, who is rescued shortly after their awakening by an agent of the Violet Underground and whisked away to safety just barely in the nick of time.

This isn’t an RP about saving the world, and it’s not a game where every plot line will have a happy ending. There will be loss and pain in equal or greater amounts as there will be joy and hope. You will be dealing with forces that were, and are, almost entirely beyond human comprehension - and you will also be dealing with forces created by mankind, too. This will be a story about survival as much as about being the good guy, and I personally have very high hopes for it.

Before we truly begin, however, some ground rules…

Rules

• 0. The Guild rules apply in all circumstances, without exception, taking precedence over other rules should it become relevant.
• 1. The GM and any Co-GMs give their word to use communication as a means to resolve problems first and foremost, however this does not mean making unreasonable concessions, and it remains that the word of the RP Mods will be final.
• 2. All players should feel free to voice their opinions, concerns, and plot-based desires to the GM and/or to any other players that are relevant to a particular arc.
• 3. Without quotable, explicit permission from a character’s own player, you may not control any character other than your own’s actions and feelings in a given situation. Similarly, players may not successfully use Black Magic on other player characters without that player’s permission and informed consent.
• 4. There will be no metagaming.
• 5. All submitted character sheets will be subject to the rule outlined in the CS skeleton section. This is to encourage communication between the player base and the GM(s) and hopefully ensure at least a certain degree of party cohesion.
• 6. Again, just for emphasis; if you are concerned about something, if you have an idea that you think would be great for your character, or if you want any extra lore info or background, please just PM me. By creating the OOC I’m inviting open and free communication about all of this, and I’d really like to hear from you if you have something to say.

mentions

@Stitches
@Guardsman
@Haydrian Cindel
@silvermist1116
@Duskshine749
@Gentlemanvaultboy

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- Expanded Lore -

Stories and Detail

Detailed Backstory

- 2016 -

The Year of the Violet Dawn

In the year 2016,

the sunrise on New Year's Morning came accompanied by a flash of purplish light, travelling the world as the sun appeared for the first time of the year, meeting the eyes and minds of each human being as and when their New Year began. No person, whether they were awake or asleep, blind or sighted, above or under ground, missed it; the light - present one moment and absent the next - touched even the most remote of dreams. It was not visible on camera, not recorded by light sensors, and no wildlife reacted to it.

For forty seven hours the media tried to suppress this, under orders from the governments of the planet Earth to prevent public disturbance while intelligence agencies and research departments conducted an investigation - but rumours have a life all their own, and do not die easily.

In the 48th hour, these rumours bore fruit; the First Wave of magicians were born, created, or awoken. The silence broke like glass. These firstmade of the new age, all of them ordinary people with ordinary lives, some of them still children... were chaotic. Magic tore most of their minds or bodies asunder, dismembering one or the other in extremely violent and terrifying displays of frequently public power. Most of them died either at the hands of their own uncontrollable powers, burning up like motes of magnesium in the dark of the world, or at the hands of the police response. The few that survived are either in the captivity of the state with their citizenships revoked and their rights nonexistent, or frantically fleeing persecution and extermination. It is estimated that only a handful could possibly be left in the wild, less than half of them still sane.

The states of almost every sovereign nation in the world launched their counteroffensive almost immediately, rounding up suspected magicians and either interning them permanently or disappearing them entirely, as the first World Wide Witchhunt began. Geopolitics began to shift dramatically as the responses of different governments drove old alliances apart and bitter enemies together - the European Union saw motions for the creation of an EU-wide military wing almost immediately in their parliament, the United Kingdom's ambitions of brexit were utterly abandoned in favour the safety provided by European intelligence cooperation; the USA became more divided than ever, and the Middle Eastern countries began calling for unity. Russia didn't change a whole lot apart from the expansion of the role of the FSB and further reductions of privacy rights for civilians.

Then, just when people were confident that normality might still be restored, just when the police were standing down, it happened again.

On the very next New Year’s Morning, another wave of Violet, washing the land and kissing the sky with its unseemly affect… and another wave of mages, all exactly one year after the first.

The second wave were more stable, but not by a lot. The government was more ready for it this time, having created special investigative task forces in advance – the forefathers of the Federal Occult Enforcement agency and other such organisations. When people began randomly manifesting their powers, they were still chaotic and dangerous, and the sheer weight of magic upon a person’s mind did indeed crush some of them… but they were more stable. There are more survivors from this generation, as a result, even if they are still rare creatures.

The Third Generation of mages, once again accompanied by a Violet Dawn on New Year’s morning, were something like a failed experiment - but in a slightly different way. They generally did not fall victim to the mentally crushing influence of the colours of magic, nor did they find their powers totally uncontrollable – instead, many of these magicians began to hallucinate in the weeks after their awakening. Some of them started holding séance-like conversations with invisible beings outside of normal perception, some of them started obsessively documenting events in the past that had never happened, but whose effects could still be felt, and some of them retreated into the wilderness more or less permanently. Their prime unifying factor is the potentially delusional belief that their abilities make them a part of something larger, some greater purpose – a trait that 90% of all 3rd Wave mages captured by the government shared, at least before they expired in captivity.

It was at this point that the national governments of the world made the decision to formalise their anti-magic agencies and outlaw the practice of magic. These bills were passed by parliaments and congresses almost unanimously in almost every sovereign nation of the world, and led to the formation of the F.O.E. in America, the European Magical Defence Agency for the EU, and several less well known agencies world over. For the most part, these organisations are willing to share intelligence on suspected magic users, and have worked together to identify families or bloodlines where magic has been noted as particularly strong. Their cooperation allowed them to develop mundane means of detecting magic, and identify particular countermeasures, which all in all really should have meant that they were more prepared for the Fourth Wave than they actually were.

When the Fourth Wave happened in 2019 martial law was declared in major cities worldwide as a means of preparing, and squads of FOE troops went roving the country equipped with the primitive arcane detection equipment their quartermaster divisions had developed – but it seemed like nothing was going to happen. Instead of raving lunatics and violent psychopaths, the magicians of the fourth generation were normal people who remained largely psychologically unaffected, and were able to hide their condition long enough to make it past the initial days of the inquisition against them. Some of them were still caught and killed – or worse – but for the first time, the majority of mages went free, even if they had to leave their lives behind to do so.

It was in the months following the Fourth Wave that the Violet Underground was born.

With the government floundering to round up the suddenly invisible magician population, one of the rare, at least broadly sane Third Generation magicians decided that if Mages were going to keep appearing and the state was going to keep murdering them, something ought to exist to prevent it. After painstaking research and a good deal of stalking, the magician known as Cam was able to put themselves in contact with four other Fourth Generation mages, and form an organisation dedicated to ensuring the survival of their kind. To reflect the colour of their breed’s first dawn, it was named – informally – the Violet Underground.

The Violet Underground

The Violet Underground set about recruiting more magicians immediately after the magician known as Cam was able to put themselves in contact with several other fourth generation mages before their magic manifested, and the organisation quickly snowballed. In total, there are a couple thousand fully fledged members across the US, with a few hundred more in other continents – and many more associates beyond that, both mundane and magical. They knew they could not escape the notice of FOE for long, but were determined nonetheless to prepare for the next wave – and magic was going to help them.

Using their powers they were able to work on identifying those people who had the spark of magic living in their souls prior to the day they awakened, and they started trying to protect them as discreetly as they could while still dodging the influence of the FOE.

They were met with mixed success, their fortunes rising and falling like leaves on a purple wind. Matters were not helped by the deteriorating condition of their founder and most powerful member, Cam.

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The Violet Underground is a largely informal organisation, which depends more on experience and seniority than any particular system of rank - although at the metaphorical top of the chain of command there is a council of founders and elder members, upon whom the burden of leadership rests. By the time of the Fifth Wave there are five council members, and Cam is no longer among them. The purpose of the organisation is to protect and defend magicians from public persecution, and to this end most cells will support mages even if they do not want to become actively involved with the VU - though they do so at their own discretion.

Although command is very rarely given to an individual, the VU do have a structure of sorts to their operations - these are not hard specific groups, as much as they are peculiar subcultures that have formed around the roles adopted by different members of the Underground, but the organisation can be roughly divided as so:

Cells and General Members:
First and foremost, they rely on the general membership for action. The active members of the VU are divided by convenience and locality into cells, which operate semi-autonomously to surveil their home areas for both FOE activity and others with magical ability or potential. These members of the Violet Underground are flexible but without specialisation, and their specific roles will often vary depending on their location and the needs of the wider organisation at the time. Apart from surveillance they will often also be the ones performing disruptive activities, gathering basic resources, and - most importantly - sheltering new recruits, or those who do not wish to take an active part in the struggle. When they are called upon, they are also the most reliable group for providing force and power, by mere merit of their magical powers.

The Free Agents:
Occasionally considered to be the next step up from the general membership of the Violet Underground are the Free Agents; a group of smugglers, criminals, spies, and otherwise specialised individuals who have - either by proving themselves as general members, or by merit of an interesting background and skillset - been recruited by the VU as specialist agents. The roles of this loose group of delocalised freeroamers are myriad and highly varied - some of them work best as spies, infiltrating law enforcement and other social institutions, whereas some others work best as smugglers or thieves - but their unifying factor is that they are highly mobile and extremely difficult to catch. They will operate either alone, in pairs, or in small groups, and can generally be asked to do anything that an individual cell can’t do alone or can’t do at all. They are an applied force, targeting any specific objectives that they are given and completing them like a mission. Many in the VU look up to them - but the less naive do their best not to get attached to Free Agents; it is usually only a matter of time before they are killed, or worse.

The Academics:
A curious group of pseudo-academics and intellectuals who see magic not simply as a tool for survival or a weapon to use, but an entire field of study. Their work often sees poor results if any, and the risks of their vocations are fiercely debated as outweighing the benefits - but they are also usually the most powerful and trained mages in the Underground, by merit of having little else to do but practice magic. When it comes to practical applications, Academics are also usually the magicians best entrusted with performing ritual magic or enchanting items, making them a sort of bizarre R&D department on top of their ‘scientific’ role. On top of this, the Academics are where you will find the majority of those magicians who believed in Cam and… whatever it was they were up to. These are the magicians who best specialise in the study of History, and Histories. You will frequently find that Academics were either genuine researchers, the more reasonable kind of conspiracy theorists, or actual believers (and ‘practitioners’) of the Occult, before they awoke.

The Bootleggers:
Though they have a mixed domain and a grey area with the Free Agents, given their overlap of skills and roles, the Bootleggers truly do deserve their own mention; these are the people who deliver your food, who smuggle you medicine, and who hide your friends. They are as vital to the Violet Underground as blood is to a body, and are responsible for the maintenance and flexibility of the logistics and supply lines that allow the continued operation of the movement. If a particular cell cannot find their own food or make their own money, and needs to draw upon the resources of the wider Underground, then it will be these people they turn to. Another interesting facet of their existence is that - although the majority by far of the Violet Underground are mages - the Bootleggers are possibly tied with the Free Agents for the highest number of mundane members. Bootleggers are big travelers, crossing entire countries on a regular basis even without the aid of Blue Magic, and this belies their most important function yet; when the Violet Dawn returns and the FOE strike, these are also the people who work most closely with local Cells to rescue the new Generation. They often live lonely lives, but theirs is a sacrifice most necessary for their peers’ survival.

Tech Support:
Another subset - and arguably, the most vital subset - of VU members are the tech support. Their role is to set up and maintain any and all of the technology the organisation relies upon, and their word is considered the best word when it comes to what chatrooms and web forums are - or are not - secure and safe to discuss things on. Unlike Free Agents, Academics, or Bootleggers, this subculture of mages are not strictly speaking any sort of special group or force to be reckoned with - instead, they typically function as part of the regular Cells. They are not held in any particular renown and have no special reputation of their own, but are nonetheless absolutely vital to the function of the group. If the Bootleggers are a body’s blood, then these people are the body’s nerves.

The Fate of Cam

Cam had escaped the curse of the third generation during their awakening, but no debt goes unpaid forever; in the year they were with the Violet Underground, they began to hear voices and see figures beckoning them, claiming to know the truth of the world, claiming that they could show them what lay beneath the thin, dry, paper skin of it all. Cam initially tried to ignore them, but was inevitably pulled deeper and deeper by the increasingly invasive hallucinations. After a while, they became obsessed with the idea that the things they were seeing were in fact other mages – but more specifically, that they were mages from other worlds, or other timelines, where things were different in the past and the present. Whether Cam was right or not, the Violet Underground would not find out until much later, and either way Cam’s hallucinations changed them radically as a person.

They became violently defensive of the narrative they were constructing – that, with the right magic, they could change the course of history, and produce a more favourable Present. They called these other places, with whose denizens they’d spoken, the Histories, and explained that the History they were a part of was merely the surface layer of a world tenfold more complex than they’d ever known – or without magic, ever would know. They began trying to pressure their peers into conducting elaborate, bizarre rituals, with the goal of sending someone into another History, so that they could pull the separate threads of the world together in a more favourable way and re-knit the fabric of reality.

These experiments failed resoundingly, with whoever was sent never returning, or never going anywhere in the first place - and Cam vanished shortly after they started.

In their absence, the Violet Underground’s leading council convened to decide who should provide them direction instead - and they could not decide on an individual at all. To this day the organisation is loosely controlled by a group of five, whose first motion was to call for an end to experimentation with the Histories.

The Violet Underground did not tamper with the fabric of reality again.

At least not until now.

The Colours of Magic

Magic is a complicated and poorly understood thing, but can be observed to follow certain patterns and rules, the foremost of which is the division of Schools by Colour. Each discipline has certain spheres of control and influence, affecting different aspects of the world and – depending on the generation of the mage – affecting different parts of the human mind. Keep in mind, however, that magic cannot affect time travel, and it cannot either create or destroy either matter or energy. It should be noted that the spells you have access to are innate knowledge, something you only realised you already knew when you were Awakened. They are not refined, not necessarily very powerful, and most importantly are not the only magic you will have access to over the course of this game. Your spell choices should be specific abilities rather than general control of the environment, elements, or people, and their effects should similarly be quite specific unless there is a prior agreement with the GM.

Violet Magic

This is magic in its purest, rawest, most alien form. It is inefficient, costly, and draining to use for any real length of time, because it is like a force without direction. The few magicians who have existed long enough to have academic theories about magic have been tossing the idea around that – where magic is concerned – Violet is the colour from which all other colours are derived, but that’s probably nonsense.

In terms of what it can do, Violet magic is primarily used for powering other forms of magic, conducting arcane rituals, or using very basic spells that have no other particular alignment in terms of Colour. Examples of these things would be; powering an enchanted item, conducting a ritual to ward a building or create something new, or attacking another person with raw mana.

Green Magic

Next there is the Domain of Green, which governs the World and Environment, representing such things as naturally occur in the world. This is the discipline that governs natural forces and phenomena, and can be used to conjure electrical energies, set fires, and shape stone. All things that exist have some interaction with the domain of green, even if they do not strictly come under its sphere of control – like animals, which belong both to the Domain of Green and the Domain of Red.

Red Magic

The Domain of Red, in turn, governs all things that change and grow, and represents Vitality and Form. It is the discipline of magic that has the most hold on the physicality of flesh and the flow of blood, and also lays claim to the magic of transmutation. This is the art of the healer, the tool of the surgeon – but also of the alchemist and the shepherd. The Domain of Red is capable of doing harm to living things – but that is not its principal purpose, and it is quite limited in how it could be used for that task. It cannot be used upon the dead.

Blue Magic

The Domain of Blue concerns the sky, space, and the space-between-space. It is the magic of the interstice, and the art by which a Thing may briefly exist in two places at once - it’s original location and a new one - and then cease to exist in the former. It does not concern swirling portals, though ritual forms of Blue magic can provide similar effects, and it does not concern pocket dimensions. The practice of Blue Magic can be rewarding but holds the highest risk; one mis-step can cause irrevocable damage, and the spatial awareness required to concentrate on the destination can be taxing.

White Magic

White Magic involves the careful control of light and dark, in order to affect an immaterial change of appearance or to illuminate (or occlude) an area. It is the discipline that recognises best the value of true sight - or indeed, the value of a clever illusion. It does not, however, concern any mental manipulation or interference with the inner workings of anyone else’s mind. This is the domain of mirages and manipulation of light that, when interpreted by the human eye, makes things seem as though they are different. However when interpreted by the other senses, and under prolonged examination, the veil is usually lifted.

Black Magic

Black magic is not an inherently dark or evil thing, but carries a moral weight that some other colours do not. The Domain of Black is the magic that wraps the heart of your fellow man around your hand like silk strong; it is the discipline that can deprive your peers of their thoughts and replace them with ones of your choosing, the discipline that can convince a man he is holding his lover, when he is clutching a pillow. It is also the Domain that best relieves pain, but is not often used for this. Notably, Black Magic usually focuses either on the deep manipulation of a single person, or comparatively shallow manipulation of larger groups. It requires that you be able to communicate with the sense you are manipulating - within visual range for visual manipulations, earshot for auditory manipulations, and so on - and also that the mind you are manipulating is sapient; this means humans, principally, but arguments can also be made for intelligent animals such as apes, chimpanzees, ravens, and so on. In order to affect an effect, the mind must first reflect, and in so doing being reflected.

An Introduction to Histories

History is a curious subject. All our lives we are led to believe that it is simply a recording of the past; an account or set of accounts of events gone by, both recent and long dead. Occasionally you will find that our recording is wrong, and correspondingly we will correct it - but otherwise History seems to be quite fixed.

After all, you cannot change the past.

For what it’s worth, that statement is not incorrect, exactly - it is indeed true that time travel is not possible, even with magic as your ally - but what the collective societal consciousness of humanity has remained blissfully unaware of until now is that there are other Histories, too, where things happened rather differently, and where things may be either less or more real than our own. Opinion is still divided on what exactly these Histories really are - whether they are other world beyond ours, or our own world with a different timeline - and opinion is even further divided on the topic of precisely what manner they co-exist with ours in; are they parallel, contemporary with ours? Are they non-parallel, with time flowing at different rates and in different ways, relatively? Is it the same timeline with fundamental physical differences, or the same physical world with a different past? Are there crossing points where the distance between them narrows, and is that what Hallucination is? What impact are they on dreams, and for whose dreams are they an impact?

And let’s not even get into the theories about why these things exist - for one thing, it’s still not certain that they actually do exist at all; especially since almost everyone who was really into them wound up going horrifically insane, or apparently ceasing to exist entirely.

Like Cam.

All that is certain about the Histories is that they are quite dangerous indeed, and that the Violet Underground is at least broadly against further experimentation.

For now.

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- OOC and CS Skeleton -

This RP aims to actively work with its player-base to produce a tailored experience to the characters. As such, it works on a mutual trust between the players and GMs to act reasonably and within the limits of the world set before them. In order to encourage communication and mutual content building for the game, the character creation process becomes an application into the RP with the slight chance of rejection.

Please do not be alarmed by this! The way that character creation works is as follows:

• The player creates their character sheet as per usual. In this example, they have some areas they could improve upon.
• A GM will formally check their sheet and provide official feedback on the improvements that need to be made before they are accepted.
• The player submits their improved sheet, whereupon it will either be accepted or declined.

Throughout the entirety of the process, the player is allowed to ask any queries they may have about lore, their application’s shortcomings, or potential ideas and work-arounds. Even though you get two ‘chances’ to formally submit your sheet, you are actively encouraged to ask any questions you have and work with the GMs to produce the best version of your character.

The CS Skeleton is below:

Character Sheet Code

[center]
[img]Image here, if applicable[/img]
[h2]Name Here[/h2]
[h3]Basics[/h3]
[b]Name:[/b]
[b]Age:[/b]
[b]Gender:[/b]
[b]Height/Weight:[/b]
[b](Former) Occupation:[/b]
[b]Appearance:[/b]
[/center]

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[center][h3] Biography[/h3]
(History goes here)
[/center]

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[h3]Skills and Weaknesses[/h3]
[b]Skills:[/b] We generally advise our players to [i]avoid[/i] choosing to have exceptional skills that are heavily reliant on the abilities of the player. This would include things like exceptional charisma or intelligence, or claiming that your character has incredibly power over other people in a social setting. We are open to discussion on this, but the general rule with stand as a reflection of our past RP experiences.
[list]
[*] Strongest Skill
[*] Second Strongest Skill
[*] ‘Weakest’ Skill
[/list]

[b]Weaknesses:[/b]
[list]
[*] Biggest Weakness
[*] Second Biggest Weakness
[*] Third Weakness
[/list]

[b]Spells:[/b] Choose specific abilities with reasonably well defined capabilities and drawbacks. These spells reflect the knowledge your character already had, not arcane study or sorcery tutorship, and similarly are unlikely to be very well refined or powerful.
[list]
[*] Spell 1 (remember to include drawbacks of casting in spell description)
[*] 2
[*] 3
[*] 4
[*] 5
[*] 6
[/list]

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ꇙ ꒤ ꋊ ꋪ ꒤ ꋊ ꋊ ꏂ ꋪ ꇙ

Yeah I'm good to start whenever. Really looking forwards to this :)

ꇙ ꒤ ꋊ ꋪ ꒤ ꋊ ꋊ ꏂ ꋪ ꇙ

@Stitches Yeah his strength is like 8, so he's quite skinny. I might bump it to 65 or 70 though.

ꇙ ꒤ ꋊ ꋪ ꒤ ꋊ ꋊ ꏂ ꋪ ꇙ

Adam 'Birdsong' Rahim

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Adam ‘Birdsong’ Rahim

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s p e c i e s Human

a g e 42

h e i g h t / w e i g h t 5"11 // 60kg

g e n d e r Male

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Attributes

s t a t s (All stats are on a scale of 1-20)

• Strength - 8
• Agility - 10
• Endurance - 14
• Will - 18
• Intelligence - 18
• Charisma - 14

s k i l l s

• Arcane Adept - Adam has spent much of his life training in the ways of magic, and claims aptitude in several schools of spellcraft. His premier is healing, and the subtle art of repairing the body and soul.
• Desert Chemist - More than once has Adam recognised a mere weed as the last ingredient in a medicine that has saved a life. His former profession has taught him better than to rely on the logistics corps to create a working supply line, and to find faith instead in what you can get for yourself.
• Surgeon-Soldier - It would be awfully daring to claim that his swordsmanship is anywhere near as good as his skill at doctoring, and at surgery, but it's not like he's never used one or never gotten training with it. The rest of his education wasn't bad either.
• Linguist - There are some souls who die out there, in the freezing cold of the night, some of them dying alone; but not Adam. 'He who seeketh mine aid need not speak the language of my ears, only the words of my heart.' Half out of paranoia and half for the purposes of his job, Adam has taken to learning languages. He now speaks several of the more common ones fluently enough and has at least a familiarity with most of what you might find out there.

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Inventory

w e a p o n s

• A Survival Knife, kept sharp, with a serrated reverse side. (one)
• A Steel longsword, slightly curved for ease of use and maintenance. (one)
• A Steel shortsword, with a straight blade for use in tight spaces. (one)
• A Hunting Bow, more for the utility than for any real fighting. (one)

a r m o r

• Head - Layered cloth wrapping, for protection from the sun and the sand.
• Chest - Padded cotton, with two separate layers of dull, uncoloured silk. Around his waist there is in excess of three seemingly redundant, but strong and well made, leather belts.
• Left Arm - Cotton, with a brass band along the forearm
• Right Arm - Cotton, with an iron band along the forearm
• Left Leg - Padded cotton trousers, with flexible boots and an iron rod woven across the front like a sabaton.
• Right Leg - Padded cotton trousers, with flexible boots and a brass rod woven across the front like a sabaton.

e q u i p m e n t

• Traveller’s Backpack
  
  • Rations of dense bread, dried meats, and dried fruits. Utilitarian, but diverse and nutritious. Enough for three days assuming good rationing practice.
  • A Doctor’s Bag, containing…
    
    • Two rolls of cotton bandages, totalling 8m length between them
    • A clay jar containing treated cotton fluff – used for fashioning dressings with bandages.
    • A kit containing other components for a variety of wound dressings
    • A set of herb and plant extracts in glass phials, labelled cryptically
    • A pouch of small pills, made of a substance not unlike salt and clay, dried out – the pouch is labelled ‘for fevers’
    • Three unlabelled jars, one clearly containing charcoal, the others containing creams or ointments of odd texture, cryptic purpose, and no smell.
    • A set of primitive ceramic syringes with alloy needle tips
    • A surgical and suture kit
  • A wooden bowl, nicely sanded and varnished
  • A decent bedroll and sleeping bag
  • A jar of honey
  • A bottle of very strong, neutral tasting alcohol
  • A waterskin, about half full
  • 9m’s worth of thin, strong cord
  • A set of wooden rods
  • 16 X Iron broadhead arrows
  • A roll of string, 3m in length.
• A large sheet of fabric, about the size where it could be used as a cloak, the colour of sand. It’s normally draped over the rest of his backpack to cover it from sand.
• A flint, used with the serrated edge of his survival knife to start fires.
• A journal, and a charcoal pencil to write in it.

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Info

a p p e a r a n c e
Adam Rahim stands at 5”11 and 60kg. He’s a reasonably skinny guy, toned enough to show his fitness but quite plainly below the average in terms of strength. His hair is dark, just showing the beginnings of silver touchings above his ears and through the peak of his beard; his skin is a dark tan, by birth and by the grace of the desert sun. He has a pleasant face with a nice, easy, resting smile, and warm eyes. On his face there is only one scar – a thin, largely faded blade mark, on the left side of his chin. It is normally hidden by his facial hair. Underneath his clothes, there are a number of other scars on his torso from stab wounds, a couple of what look like they might have been very serious abrasions or erosions, and one quite obvious burn on his right pectoral. These scars have not, however, marred the fine and intricate tattoo work on his shoulders and above his heart – fine black lines of script, arranged in beautiful and painstaking patterns - around a symbol of a staff and a single snake, coiling stylistically around the body of the staff. The staff itself is encircled by a black ring of the aforementioned script, and it is present on his chest (slightly to the left of the sternum, tilted to the right), and on both arms in smaller variants.
Though it is hardly common knowledge, these tattoos are the signifiers of rank and station within the Asperan military. His in particular show that he is a member of the medical corps, and that his position is as a battlefield surgeon and healer. There are subtle hints as well that he is a practitioner of magic, but these are concealed amongst the vows, oaths, and poetry of the rest of the text, easily visible only to those who know to look.

p e r s o n a l i t y
Adam Rahim gained the nickname ‘Birdsong’ because there is no direct translation from the Asperan language’s word he was originally called by – the closest meaning in our language would be ‘a man whose heart belongs to birds’, or ‘someone very easily distracted by daydreams of places where birdsong echoes’. Needless to say it’s a lot more eloquent in that language – but it is very telling about the man himself; he in indeed a daydreamer, and a starry eyed idealist, who grew up on beautiful stories about another place where forests grow and birds sing in the mists of morning. He is kind, thoughtful, and insightful, his life coloured by the paint of optimism and faith in human goodwill. Perhaps most marked, however, is his curiosity, and his love of adventure. He originally joined the army to ‘… go and see the world.’ It was wanderlust and the desire to go and see beautiful sights that first brought him to the Sunrunners Guild – he has yet to regret it.

l i k e s
Adam is a man of relatively simple pleasures. He likes to see new things, he likes to revisit old things he's seen before, he likes to help people out, he likes a little wine...

• New sights and experiences
• Old sights and experiences he has fond memories of
• Lending aid to those in need, and the practice of medicine
• Wine - preferably cold, white wine.
• Bathing or splashing his face with cold water
• Recording his journeys in his diary
• Campfires with friends
• The sound of birds singing

d i s l i k e s

• War
• The taste of fever medication
• Bad dreams
• Being confined indoors for long periods of time
• Dispassionate, cold, unfeeling people
• Doing harm
• Dusty hands
• Sandstorms, especially without shelter

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