The Crystal Tower RPYou are gently awoken from your sleep as the boat comes to a stop. You yawn deeply, taking a deep breath of cool, salty morning air, and stretch pulling yourself up into a sitting position. You slowly rub the sleep from your eyes letting them adjust to the feint early morning light. You can vaguely make out the dark shape of the ferryman, standing over you and your companions. But he is not what everyone is staring at. Before you, jutting out of the small, rocky island, stands a structure that you had only heard about until this moment. A huge crystaline tower rising up into the clouds, it's smooth surface shimmering and glowing with a feint light of a color you cannot quite place your finger on. The hair on the back of your neck begins to stand up and your heart begins to beat faster and faster. You can feel the quiet thrum of energy pulsing, and flowing through the air around this place, and slowly you come to the honest realization that this is the place where you will spend the next ten years of your life.
Welcome! This is my first attempt at running a forum game. My idea is that you are all children discovered to be able to use magic, brought to the Mages Tower most prestigious school for magic outside of perhaps the Grand Imperial College of Magic. The Mages Tower is a mysterious crystal structure that rose out of the ground nearly two hundred years ago in the middle of the great city of Amsusesh causing part of the city to break off and drift out to sea. As the years progressed the structure was investigated and found out to be hollow on the inside and set up like an actual building. There were floors and stair cases, and doors and windows. Mages begin to flock here in an attempt to be the one to discover the secrets of the tower. Well soon a small town sprung up around it, and once it was determined to be safe the mages set up a college to both study the crystal and to teach, and train new mages.
I will be playing most of the teachers and other students at the school but I will not have a character for myself. This is better for me as it will allow me to focus on giving all of your own characters their own storyline and arc. I will also be somewhat busy as I am going to school and I recently got a job, so I will have periods of absence, but I will try to post something at least every couple of days.
Rules
- No godmodding, remember you are in fact apprentices. I will let you get more and more powerful as it goes but at least as of now you all should be fairly weak at magic at least.
- I admit I do make mistakes, but if you do have a problem with something, please pm me. It will be easier for me to take criticism that way.
- Please do not make a character if you are going to drop it in a week or so. For my sake, I don't want to just introduce your character then have them drop
- I understand if things come up and you can't keep up with the game, but please tell me if you do. I don't want to be waiting around for a week for you to respond if you aren't going to.
Setting InformationBelow is some information on the setting. Not all of it is important to this game in particular and I'll only request that people at least read over the stuff under the Crystal Tower, and How Magic Works sections. The rest is is extra for those of you who are interested.
Magic works by drawing in, and controlling new energy into a closed system, the closed system being the universe. This can produce a variety of effects such as barriers, throwing lightning, or pretty much anything you can think of that involves energy. It does have it's limits though. Firstly it does take time to cast a spell, the better you get at magic the quicker you can cast but even the best mages need a few moments to concentrate to throw out anything potentially lethal. Second, drawing on magic harms your body, I'll go into this in more detail later in the gathering section, but basically if you use too much magic you could end up with serious organ damage. Third there are certain effects that just can't be accomplished through magic. You can't create or destroy matter, you cannot teleport or manipulate space, you cannot manipulate time in any way, and it is impossible to invade another person's mind. Illusions are a funny subject, you may enchant an object or place to appear differently or invisible but it is very hard to do and takes weeks and weeks or calculations and work to make it look right from all angles, and it only works if said object is not moved. Creating Illusions on the fly is outright impossible.
Anyway lets get to some of the specifics of casting a spell:
Gathering - The first step to casting a spell is to gather energy for it. To do this a mage must reach outside of the universe with their mind and tap into a seemingly infinite sea of swirling chaotic energy, called the Aether. This gives the mage a rush almost like adrenaline but better. This is often considered a very good feeling, warm, excited, you feel like you are unstoppable. Because of this many mages end up accidentally drawing in too much energy, particularly on their first try. This is often deadly causing the poor young mage to either die from internal bleeding (note: the rush of energy sometimes causes the mage not to feel his internal wounds until a few minutes later.) if they are stopped soon enough, or outright explode. Most mages cannot perfectly control the energy the gather, so bits leak out as they are casting the spell. This produces small effects like a slight glow or a breeze when all but the most powerful mages are gathering.
Shaping - once the mage has gathered energy he must shape it to his wishes. This takes both quite a bit of discipline and the ability to estimate and do mathematical calculations on the spot. If their mind is distracted in any way, the spell will go awry. If they have any other emotions or thoughts in their head that could interfere with the spell, and cause the magic to do something completely different than intended. For example if a mage wanted to close a door with magic, but he was exceptionally angry he could accidentally rip the door off it's hinges. Mathematical calculations are necessary because you need to know exactly how your application of magic will effect the energy of the world around you. Sort of like the butterfly effect, any spell has many unforeseen effects if you do not know how to contain it properly. Most mages describe casting a spell and weaving energy. They describe "lines" or "threads" of magic, and to most it is a very geometrical process.
The Flow of Energy - Mages become more attuned to the flow of energy of the world the more they cast spells. This allows them to sense when other mages are casting spells, and if an object has any enchantments on it. This often comes across as a sort of "static electricity feeling" but more powerful mages can even sense what said spells and enchantments are supposed to do.
Crystals - Crystals are able to hold and store magical energy. These are used mostly in enchanted items. Most crystals are not perfect for this and energy will leak out slowly over a few weeks so they have to be frequently recharged. There is a special type of crystal called Guilimite that will hold magical energy indefinitely though. These are fairly rare, and are the basis for the Empire's economy.
Character sheetName: (Greek names are a good starting point. Just nothing too silly or modern)
Age: (between 10 and 12. I will not accept any older, younger ones could be negotiated though. Remember I plan to do time skips so you will age as it goes)
Appearance: (I would prefer a picture and a short description, but either works. Anime is acceptable but please nothing too crazy, particularly with hair color.)
Background: (Most of you will have been trained by someone for a year or two before being sent to the Tower. Make sure you include who that was for my sake)
Personality:
Skills: (List skills you learned outside of magic up to this point. Also list if you are best at gathering, which will mean your spells are more powerful, shaping, which means you have more control over magic, or sensing magic.)
Element: (One of the four basic elements. You will be slightly more talented at magic manipulating this, but are by no means limited to it. Not incredibly important but I'd like to know)
One extra thing I would like everyone to do once they have made a character is send me a message saying what you would like to get out of the game or what you are most excited for. This helps me make sure I give everyone what they want. It's my job as the gm to make sure everyone has fun and often times I assume someone is looking to get one thing out of a game and they actually want something completely different. This would just help me avoid that.
Unfortunately though, for my sanity and the quality of the game as a whole I may have to limit the number of players I can accept (Probably no more than 6). I will not be deciding who gets in on a first come first serve basis, as I feel this would promote putting less thought into your characters, rather once I feel I have most of the characters in, I will then pick the ones I feel are the best. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to create a character though, and if you don't get in on the first round I will still keep you in mind if someone drops out or something.
Will be continuously updating info on the setting. Feel free to pm me or post in the OOC if you want to discuss character ideas or have any questions about anything I posted. I really look forward to seeing everyone's characters!
