Dinh AaronMk

Ashes of the Old World (A Dieselpunk Nation Roleplay)

So before I set about working on my application again I wanted to say here that last night while working I had the thought that: wait, everyone's nation claims seem to be too big for their population. Assuming the Great Expanse doesn't expand further beyond and all the deleted stuff is just more water than the Pacific and the total landmass of this world is proportionally far smaller than Earth (given if it were, I'd expect things to be far wetter and the massive desert in Karakus would be far smaller; if not non-existent or in some strange semi-state where it becomes a desert for only a few months of the year because the ground water got sucked up by the plant life and now it's all waiting for a new rainy season with possibly northern winds bringing wet - cool - air back. Or if the air currents lead from the south the southern mountain chain there would just funnel everything north and it would probably just being an even larger grass lands region.

I also know this is pretty late into things to point out, probably would have been best pointed out in an interest check phase because really the thing I'm worried about more is the relationship between nation sizes vs populations. A lot of the nations here at play have populations roughly corresponding to European countries at roughly the same time in history. And assuming this world is a loose 1:1 analogue (plus or minus a few thousand or so miles) then a lot of the countries on the map take up immense space, but with populations as low as France close to the mid-century. I determined this by overlaying a map of the Earth over top and scaling it and stretching it to match the proportions of the given projection of the fictional world and making shapes the shape of and size of existing comparable countries and moving them around. And a lot of y'all got nations the size of Europe itself.

This may not seem like a big issue but it raises a pretty major plot hole, in my opinion. Disregarding the volcanic eruption that sets the scene and we're in a period of this world's history where by the scale of these countries alone, and their over all low population density they might actually be pretty much economically independent, materially: they don't have to do anything but grow their populations. They're small enough in head count - most of them - that I imagine the forests could recover from the volcanic eruption at a rate faster than the timber can be exploited. There's a lot of open land so the population can easily expand internally.

The only thing that might be an issue materially speaking is when a country wants something that can only be found outside of itself. But because the potential for production of that may be so high and the demand for any of it so low the relative costs of that would render these commodities very cheap.

Ideologically speaking, anything like ethnic cleansing like in the Dwarven Volkish state could be answered simply by... said people walking a few miles away. Bjergavjern being just over six Nazi Germany's in 1939 (With the Sudentland, Austria, and Germany itself, the bit in Lithuania it had excluded) tall and maybe one and a half wide on a population just over Nazi Germany's population at the time. The Republic of Acrad would be in an even weirder situation being as best as I can estimate: twice the size but a little over quarter the population, not counting non-citizens; and assuming the state is accidentally more Fascist than the Dwarven fascists then I can only assume that there may be more non-Acradians than Acradians and those people can just move to another corner and exist as their own independent nation.

I raise these concerns in part because I do intend my nation to be post-colonial and I kind of want this to be better defined. Either the existing countries get cut down to be more proportional for their populations so I find it difficult to believe they're developed nations when an over all density so low. Some of these can be easily divided into thirds and work for their population, even after a cataclysmic volcanic event.

The other alternative would be to have drawn internal boundaries to mark where internal colonies of sorts would be, meaning anyone not of the original peoples. That way the borders can remain the same and all that'd need to be done is editing the populations counts of each nation by adding a zero.

Border-wise also a lot of these countries don't look like they're empires that collapsed but empires that managed to hold on and not sub-divide when the state itself couldn't hold onto things spread so far apart as they are. So to be even more reasonable to the story provided by the RP I'd really argue for greatly reducing the size of all of these countries.

Ironically, Encoded is probably the closest to the truth and if they want to keep to just 13 million it wouldn't be unreasonable to split region 20 in half.

Ashes of the Old World (A Dieselpunk Nation Roleplay)

This'll be finished later, but for once in my life I'm going to drop an unfinished application. I have to go to work, but I'm leaving this for review and input since it's clearly a Work in Progress.

Gracias.

Flag:


Nation Name:
People's Liberatory Republic Yaguarapias
(Republaxcas Mianapas Yaguarpax Plienas)

Type of Government:
Autonomous Anarchist Confederation

Head(s) of Government:
Nominally there are no individual heads of the government due in part to the national structure. But the general ruling body is the Federal Caracal below which are a network of local municipal caracals; or popular assemblies formed on a direct democratic basis in the form of an open town hall. Between the local municipalities and the Federal Caracal are confederations of differing caracals openly working among one another to achieve a common local or national objective or goal. The Federal Caracal in this respects acts largely as a mediating body elected from local steering committees, or the executive councils of the local caracals with the power to set agendas, though not make active decisions by themselves.

Parallel to the federal system of local councils is the National Liberation Army comprised of effective militias which lends to the military structure of the Republic. Granted however active servicemen or women of the armed forces are barred from civil service until they leave the army. The presiding commander is Commandant In The First Leoman Exlocaca.

Federation of Industrial Workers (Federas Palal Manufacturel) - The 'national' union of industrial workers and craftsmen in the confederation.

Economy:
The predominant industry in the Republic has been agriculture and agricultural products based around banana or coconut plantations and coffee in the interior mountains. But in other regions there is a vast raw material extraction in the high mountains. Industrially, the Republic relies mostly on cottage industry though prior to the Revolution there had been efforts to develop a modern industry that has since been seized by the national labor union.

The industrial labor unions control the industrial manufacture of gods and resource extraction and is itself comprised as being an alliance of mostly autonomous but mutually supportive unions within the larger union. The agricultural output has likewise by unionized under the auspices of far more localized unions of ranchers, farmers, and plantation workers. The production of and use of the labor of any of the members is decided by the members themselves.

Unique Technologies:
Qualomaxtiti - Or an AutoGyro, a primitive helicopter primarily used to move supplies or persons over the rain forest.

Primary Species:
The Jaguateca are the primary natives of the area. Though since their revolution they have openly accepted the dissidents or emmigrants of other nations and there's a growing population of foreign residents adding to the cultural milieu of the confederation.

Population:
38 million.

Culture:
The origins myth of the Jaguateca have it that the first of their race was made from the darkness of the jungles when the panther god jumped the young girl in the forest. And as the god bit into her neck she drew a knife and cut the throat of the god. As both lay in a dying embrace the magical blood of the panther god intermixed with the blood of the girl as it was swept down the mountain rivers where it watered the roots of a mango tree. The magical blood, drunk from the roots of the tree imbibed in the fruit the magic of creation and as the fruit grew and ripened it dropped to the forest floor and split, giving birth to the first Jaguateca, half human and half feline.

Due to living in a state between man and animal the Jaguateca people revere both the animal world and the human world and lived for centuries in a kinship between the two. Their naturalistic, paganist ways recognized an innate spirituality in each thing in the natural and artificial world that heightened their spiritual and materialist connection with the world. As the eons wore on this believe developed further as as a sort of pluralistic world view.

While globalization of trade and empire eroded many of the orthodox beliefs and destroyed much of the old ways in colonization, the innate pluralistic approach has remained as they began to absorb in time new ways and new ways of appreciating their ontological perception of the world.

The Jaguateca are principally egalitarian sexually and don't believe in clear distinction between the capacity of man or woman and that all souls are fundamentally the same. As such there's no gendered difference in the activity of man or woman. Owning a pet is unheard of, because of the same logic and anything that might be considered a pet has historically been allowed to move about the community as it will. Prior to colonization marriages were open relationships, although this conception of marriage does not exist in the more urban locations. Child rearing is also in itself a communal affair, with an early life emphasis on not just the parents themselves but the entire extended family before the whole of the community.

Religion and Other Beliefs:
Jaguateca orthodoxy holds a purely pagan world view, though there has been some syncretic mergers with outside religions has they have come and go. Principally there if reverence to the parent gods, or guardians: the Panther Father and the Water Woman or Padro Pandero and Madri Aquadeico. Otherwise, many other facets of the natural or created world are observed as having a special spirit of their own and the belief is to handle all in respect.

Water of all things is given the highest respect, since in their tropical homeland the rainy season can send torrential rains which can threaten entire community, especially those in the mountainous highlands where flash floods are common. The act of flooding is spoken of as being a reenactment by nature of the fight in the river when the blood of the human girl and panther god was played out.

Location/Territories:
Island 26

Climate:
The archipelago that makes up the confederation is a diverse range of biomes. From the large island of Santo Gran split by its dormant volcanic mountain, separating the wet northern half from the drier and cooler southern half. The outlying islands are also likewise rich and fertile tropical islands whose climates made for prized plantations.

Military:
Magic Prevalence/Usage:
History/ Background Info:
Nation Relations (Can be as simple as a brief two line summary for your neighbors):

The Vampire princes

pls I send letter once but you ignore me, not Semiane comes by himself pls respon

tank yuo

The Vampire princes

The low chime of bells sang low and solemn in the night. Still, after all this time the morning for the dead king continued. And fear for their prince, who rumor would have it had crawled back to the capital barely alive. Some had whispered in hushed tones, low so as the guards would not here: he came in on the back of an ass, like a drunkard; poisoned as if he had imbibed too much alcohol. To Semiane, this represented a sharp change in the story, in his expectations. Walking through the half empty streets outside he listened to the low chiming of the bells and the mutterings from the door frames. All up and down the streets the citizens laid out tokens and totems in solemn observance of the dead king's passing. Men and women, mortal and immortal alike who had believed that they would have lived under the auspicious and immortal gaze of an age-old wise king – even if he would not rule forever – made silent processions through the streets holding up paintings and portraits of the dead king as if he were a saint.

Many too had decorated their images as if religious icons. Among the human cattle they hoisted great oil portraits of the ivory white emperor, the frame draped in heavy bolts of black and purple cloth as they joined in chorus with the bells, singing lamentations and sending prayers to the kind. The Vampires seemed to done hooded cloaks and walk about cutting their palms with long knives and letting the blood spatter on the cobble stone; there was an overwhelming smell of blood and tears. Some of the middle-dead mourners even chimed brass bells and sat beside wooden icons of some generic ancient king and acted as if they spoke to the statuettes as if they could hasten their words to the departed immortal.

Whether or not they would ever like Edward, there was the recognition that he was their only chance for salvation in what seemed to be a dire time. Rumors were aflood on the streets that Baron Ulrek had finally mobilized his armies. The strength of these frightening tails seemed to take on a strength in validity even when they did conflict that sustained them by the silence of the royal court to confirm or deny anything. They burned like fire in a dry forest, burning all the brighter and all the more terrible all the day. To Semiane who had not yet gotten an audience in the royal court, this frenetic terror at the least paid for his crossing over as he reached out to the lower nobility who resided in the city and the aristocracy who found themselves most troubled; after all, what sort of terrifying future was there for them if Ulrek took the city, or what might happen if the terror incited the peasantry to rise in open revolt?

In the past twenty four hours he had signed a the bills and contracts for one-hundred-twenty minor nobility and merchants alike for the recruitment of mercenaries to be recruited by Semiane number on average a hundred men per unit. He had not specified who or from where these mercenaries would hail from given the short notice and nature, but had issued his captain a blank check to return home with and recruit who he may at which ever price. The upper classes assured them to the deepest part of their being, to their very souls that they would repay Semiane twice the price of whoever was willing to compensate the foreign merchant's lost capital.

Likewise, he had signed bills of sale for another dozen families and even for moderately well off commoners in the city for arms and armor, of which he promised the most modern and the best; matchlocks from over seas, sturdy armor, and sharp swords for their own protection. For this he had exacting prices he could demand on the spot and they paid or sought out loans to pay for it. All in all, as it was on the street an economy for war was brewing as the fear gripped the hearts and minds of the populace. But there was still one lingering issue.

“The king is dead, how will I get to the court?” Semiane cursed under his breath as he stood in the middle of a open court. Strings of lit lanterns ran every which way and that bathing the square in a soft green and blue light from the stained paper that encased the candles within. At the center a massive obelisk rose crowned by a clump of swarming bats manifested in marble. Townhouses and merchant's businesses lined the outside of the court, their darkened doors and windows framed behind the vaulted archways of the pillars supporting the overhanging structures. High above them, looming dark and daunting atop its spiteful butte loomed the Gothic palace of the imperial family.

“I would hate to suggest it, but I'd suggest simply going to it.” said a young vampire, a replacement companion for Semiane's missing captain who had sailed back for brighter shores clutching the forms for hundreds of contracts and a payment for the job. For all intents and purposes now, Semiane was alone but he did not feel the least bit uncomfortable.

“That's preposterous.” exclaimed Semiane, “Incredibly impolite.”

“It may be the only way at this point.” the vampire said. He was about the third the age of Semiane. His face long, chin protruding. He accentuated his deep set eyes with black eye liner and he looked absolutely skeletal. He also dressed in a modest way, deceiving for his otherwise high stature but overlooked by most of his family, he stood clutching the hilt of his sword.

“I don't doubt you are a fine gentleman, but I know in my experience one doesn't normally barge into a monarch's palace. That so much I have learned in my time. Have you ever been there?”

“I have.” the young vampire said with a smug smile, “For galas.”

“Those are invitation. Not going there on one's own free will.” Semiane huffed, he felt impatient.

“Who said I was invited?” the young vampire said with a smile, showing his long sharp front teeth.

Semiane looked at him stunned, “Munchsin, what are you saying?”

“On and off I have often walked in. Sure I'm stopped by the guards who ask who I am. Under normal circumstance: sure they might turn me away. But I'm sure now with all courtesy turned aside you could announce yourself and go in. With the prince down you may not be speaking to him. Some steward or high courtier perhaps, but once he's awake and crowned: there is no reason they can't inform him you would like an audience. Or you might insert yourself in the palace right away. The kingdom is operating on regency, and who ever is regent now would have the power of the King until the new king himself awakens from his supposed coma.”

Semiane sighed, “I suppose you might be right.” he admitted, it was painful to do so. “So I suppose, I guess: lead the way.”

The young Munchsin smiled and bowed. “Very well, this way.” he said.

Semiane cast one last look up over the roof tops as he went towards the palace. Tonight would be the night, he supposed.

---

Semiane stood at the gates of the palace. Far below him a wide and winding stone cut path climbed its way back down to the city. From this high perch he looked out to the sea, and saw the celestial scattering of the lights, heard the distant lamentations of the mourners, and beyond that the sheltered bay and the more distant sea. From up here he smelled the salt of the sea, and the dankness of the air. A storm was coming, he could sense that.

Ahead of him a large iron gate stood guarded by an entire company of soldiers who stood at attention with their halberds. One armored hand hooked into the belt of their livry. Their heads turned to watch the guests with silent sharpness and a repressed agitation. The whole structure was tall, far and above what Semiane had expected from the ground and he felt imposed upon, daunted. But casually and with firm purpose he strolled up to the gates and with Munchsin announced his presence.

“I am Semiane Munch Strige of the House of Vrykolas. Former Baron of Transavonia, current a high-valued financier. I come here to the palace in search of lending my services. I offer to the prince my broad network of contacts, financial resources, and personal capabilities and would like an audience. I sought one with the late king, but it appears in these last days he was too busy. I respect that he had no time to speak to a worm such as my self. But in these trying times I come to petition personally. May I enter?”

A soldier stepped forward from the gate, the captain. He wore no helmet, and his bald head was as dull and bruised as a naked skull. He tilted his head as he looked at him, a heavy hand resting on his sword. He seemed to be studying him. Shrugging he said, “If that's so, I'll send for a request. We'll see.” he said. Turning, he gestured to his men and whistled.

“I'm on it.” said a voice.

The captain nodded, “And now we wait.”

Precipice of War - The Big Leagues of NRP (Only generous tippers need apply)

Siberia

Yerofeysky

“Have I told you of my first time in the woods?” the tall Cheng Bao said, idly stirring a tin pot. His eyes reflected the light of the small gas stove with a sharp inner light shining ahead from distant memory.

“No, I don't think you ever did.” said another. Yu Huan. It had not been a more than a year they were in the Siberian back country, a few months. But far from the comforts of civilization to the south his pudgy face had worn away. Now it looked shallow and it sagged. His face beginning to sharpen. He looked with a muted expression, but spoke lively. His knees pulled up to his chest he sat resting his arms out around the side, twisting at a tree branch. He shivered against the cold nocturnal air of a Siberian autumn.

“I was maybe five or six, maybe seven.” began Bao, “My dad took me hunting. We were out to find muntjac. Lately they had been rooting about in the vegetables so it was decided to thin the herds. We'd also have some meat to eat. So in the early morning, before the sun rises he comes to me in my cot and wakes me and my brother up and tells us it's time to go.

“He used to keep his rifle wrapped up in a burlap sack underneath his bed, and he had it out that morning leaning against the stove. It was some Japanese rifle he had picked up during the Revolution, an Arisaka. But work had been done to it somewhere along the line I assume. It always just looked heavier to me. But anyways: he takes the gun and he leads us out, I and my brother sleepy as we step out onto the dewy grass and trudge along after him.

“My dad has always had a long gait, and he walked fast. I couldn't keep up, but neither could my brother although he fared better than I in keeping up. I had to start jogging to keep up, which wasn't hard so long as we were going along on the road. But the moment we got to the woods then it was much more difficult.

“But he made do along a small path that split from the road. High up in the hills passed the woods was where the farmers had their rice fields and that was the only route up to them. We were still too early yet for anyone to be awake, and we had the path to ourselves. But among the bamboo and the trees the world began to darken quick and soon it was like the thickest of night, like right now.” he stopped stirring the pot briefly to gesture about. They sat out behind their barracks, boiling a pot of dried rice ration they had scrounged up from the commissary. The village around them was dark, and the sky clear and speckled with starlight. But without a moon there was no real light to it all. Only the faint twinkling of some reflected star or planet in the creek and the vague shapes of trees and horizon gave shape to where the village ended and the wilderness began. A dry clean presence hung on the crisp cold air and Wu Hong could feel it chill the back of his throat at each breath. He shivered, though it was no cold he was unfamiliar with ultimately.

“It is unusual, being in the woods early because while it feels and looks so lifeless there are always so many birds singing somewhere in it. That has always struck me, how noisy they are. Someone could hide themselves well in the darkness of the very early morning and no one would hear their footsteps with all the bird song. This was my problem, because too tired and too small to keep up with my older brother and my dad I began to lag behind and I had to race to keep up. But always I would hear as their footsteps became more distant and harder to hear among the birds.

“Eventually the path came to a fork. I've never been up there much before then, and I remember clearly not knowing which way to go. So I must have guessed. I took a path. Right I think, but it was much narrower and lesser kept. I think it might have been something only a child could see because remembering back I clearly remember it being very ill used. Though it may have been an animal path for pigs or the like.

“But after a while, I noticed the path was headed me downhill, and I suspect I believed I needed to go uphill. And what worried me was that I couldn't hear any more foot steps. I was terrified, you know. Terrified! I probably started breaking down in tears and I started crying, and turned back to head up hill. I skipped the path though, I think I thought if I did that it would be a shortcut: you know. Anyways, I started to go up.

“But it's hard to find direction in the woods. I learned that then, and I soon became terrified that I would never find the path and started running. I must have switched back and forth many times because I never did find it. But I did eventually break into a clearing. There were a lot of broken pieces of metal every where. There was a smashed plane, in the grips of creepers and vines with bamboo growing right through the cockpit!

“I had never known it was there, so I went to it. Maybe, you know: I could have found some direction. But I never did. I ended up stumbling through, or maybe I tried to climb the wreck and fell into a bush. And I'm surprised I never had nightmares about it later, but falling out of the bush with me came half a human skeleton, all held together by, like creepers and vines and shit and whatever bit of tendon had dried to it. I screamed, or I must have screamed but I guess something happened to terrify the birds because they all began scattering and screaming too and there in the grass looking up at me was this cracked and busted skull, it looked like it had shot itself through the head. I don't know whose head it was or why it was there but it froze me and I was crying and making loud noises.

“But I must have made enough, because anyways my father came bounding out of the woods with my brother in toe and he scooped me up. He said some stuff to me to calm me now and dropped the rifle and picked me up and saw the skull.”

“So did you finish the hunt?” Ju Gan said, reclining against a stack of fire wood.

“You know: I can't remember. But, some time later my father went back or must have been soon on the family alter he had placed the skull. I was terrified of it for a long time and would try to find excuses to paying my respects just to avoid the skull and its empty staring nightmare eyes. But as I grew older over the year it lose its effect. I came to recognize it as just an object, really. It was a man: yes. He had been alive: yes. But now he was just an object. I never got the full story on why it had been placed there. But over time I began to pick up bits and pieces and I began to suspect it was the head of a Japanese pilot and that maybe he had once flown over the village and killed some people, we had lost family in the Revolution; I don't know if it was battle of starvation or disease but we had lost them. I think this might have been a way for my dad to help placate the ancestors if any were vengeful. So there it stayed, and remained there until I left. I think it's still there.”

“How old are you now? Nineteen or something?” asked Keung.

“Something like that.” said Cheng Bao.

“So you had to be, what, four or five when the revolution ended?”

“Well it had moved beyond my village when it did. But I don't remember anything about the time. But I do know for some time after there was a problem with unexploded bombs in the area and that probably terrified my dad more than being lost in the woods, if anything. Fortunately, I never had a run-in, but I've heard stories told of people having stumbled upon an old bomb and loosing a limb or a life. It's rare, but it happened.”

“We were afraid of that too.” chimed Wu Hong, “the unexploded bombs. There were a few of those in the fields.”

“Oh? If you don't mind me asking though: where are you from. I don't think you have said, Hong.”

“Jilin, Changbai County. It was around where Baekya operated.”

“How'd you end up in Manchuria?” asked Lei.

“My family moved up there early. Or rather, my father volunteered in the army in the north and moved north to fight for the Korean Anarchists, met my mom. They eloped and married. Technically they moved to the village I was born because they eloped, they were escaping their parents; I don't know my grandparents well at all.”

“That's unfortunate.” Lei remarked.

Wu Hong shrugged, “It never bothered me.”

“So what about the bombs?” Cheng Bao asked.

Wu Hong clammed up, looking to the side. He knew all about those. He had seen them even. Artillery shells that never exploded, aircraft bombs. Some were chemical, he was told. Others just blew up.

“You saw one go off?” asked Cheng Bao. Wu Hong nodded.

“That's harsh.”

“It was a friend of mine, he was digging in the dirt because he thought he found a rock he could throw in a pond. He... he evaporated, basically.”

A collective wince ran through the group as they recoiled.

“I didn't go back outside again for maybe a year after.” Hong added.

“Have they been cleaned up at all?” Ju Gan asked.

“I think so. Perhaps. I wouldn't really know. I wanted to get out when I could.”

There was a long silence after. Cheng Bao checked the rice and announced with a sigh, “I think it's done.”

There were murmurings of thanks as they dove in with their hands. The rice was tasteless and bland, sticky on the fingers but the fresh hotness of freshly prepared rice was a relief to the soul cooled by turning winds; it was worth the burning of their fingers.

Their mute enjoyment however was cut off quickly as with a knock the pot was knocked aside, scattering hot rice everywhere as in the moment following the crack of a rifle echoed in the night. The squad scrambled and dove for cover as all at once the silent night was brought to life with the sound of gun fire. Wu Wong dove for the ground and covered his head as over his head rifle bullets cracked into the wood of the house being used as a barracks. Distantly the chattering reports of machine guns sang along the tree line as phantoms from the forest attacked the sleeping village.

Hong was forced to his feet as Ju Gan dove over, assuming in an instant the sergantly demeanor expected of him as he began to shout orders. So were others as lights were thrown on and the entire village erupted in a furor of voices. The intensity of the gun fire rose as the men on patrol gave their answer to the fire and out on the edges of the village made their painstakingly blind shots into the wood line.

Hong felt like a puppy as he was lifted up by and pushed along by the force of his instinctual training. A hard spirit tossed him through the door of the house as he dove for his bed, producing a rifle wrapped in burlap under the bed. Strange, he thought: this felt familiar.

The windows began to glow as a bright phosphorescent light took on the brightness of a midnight sun and scattered the darkness. With it too was scattered the cold air. Now it all tasted stale as Hong was forced back out to the street with staggering and confused ape men with their brutish rifles. Mustered up by his sergeant, Hong found himself again by the side of Ju Gan. The others were there, they were armed. But where was the radio? Huan looked to be without it. He had a rifle, that was certain. His glasses shone with the same phosphorous glow of the flare hanging high in the sky. It was not alone, or not for long; several more diamond white burning phoenixes had joined it; swooping up high into the air from beyond the trees as a war cry bellowed from beyond.

But they were on the move again. Had Ju Gan gotten the information he needed somehow? Was there a telepathy between the officers, even the non-commissioned? If so, why was there even radios. Never the less, perhaps it had something to do with the trailing great coat of the senior office running ahead, a pistol raised as he screamed. And then he was off into the labrynth, running up against the pine wood and plank siding as he heard joining into the chorus the frightened screams of children. Was this really the place? The time?

The dimensions of the place seemed to change. There was so much more going on now then there ever had been. Was their group this big before? There were soldiers now, it looked to be hundreds. He could not count all the men as he ran along. He could barely hear his heart beating as they drew up to where the bullets were flying. Window glass lay strewn across the ground, shimmering like diamonds at the bottom of a pool in the hard packed clay of the street. Bright white splinters of wood too joined it, along with rose pedals. Hundreds, and thousands of them bleeding out of bodies. Wu Hong felt sick, he had to fight it back. He looked away and closed his eyes. Again he opened them when he felt a firm hand grip his shoulder and he looked up to the conciliatory glare of Huan. He could swear his glasses were a window into a much more calmer soul.

“Keung, is there a back door?” Sergant Gan called out.

“No, I don't think so.” Keung called back. Their voices sounded distant.

Darting down the road a man riding a gray horse tore onto their street, a raised saber. Hong Wu looked up at the rider, a gray phantom and a sparkling ghostly scimitar. With a crack besides his ear a rifle shot towards the rider as the horse turned towards them, a second and a third shot rang out and each bullet landed. From alongside Wu Hong he watched the rider's shoulder bloom as the bullet tore his shoulder. A second pierced his gut from behind and a third tore through the horse's shoulder and it ran careening several feet before crumpling into the dust.

But soon after the rider came others. Sepia gray phantasms that tore threw, lashing out with sabers or turning handguns against them. Hong Wu could do little but to raise his rifle and blocked the swing of one sword. Its biting tip stinging his nose as it drew back and the rider kept going.

Bullets raced after them as they left. Hong Wu lay pressed tight against the wood house feeling warm and numb. He looked to his side, Keung seemed to have taken something across the face and he sat clutching at his brow with the sleeve of his coat. The riders down the street were dropped by the rifle follow that pursued them, but not all of them dropped and their horses kept charging.

“What's going on?” shouted a man on the other side of the street as them.

“I don't know!” Ju Gan shouted back.

“Do we have orders? Do we have a plan?” answered the other.

“No! Just to come here!”

“The fucking eggs!”

The Vampire princes

ok.

wait...what?

@Vampiretwilight

I run a nation RP. In that RP I write as China. To open a post I'm having a conversation between a few characters where one tells a story of his first time in the woods. I need a reason for him to have been there. Thus: hunting. Therefore: I'm trying to dig up the specefics of hunting in China that doesn't relate to foreign-based trophy hunting, as is often written about online.

Google Image War - Take Two

Famous Quotes You Shouldn't Say During Sex

"Money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the exchanges, whereby different products of labour are practically equated to one another and thus by practice converted into commodities. The historical progress and extension of exchanges develops the contrast, latent in commodities, between use-value and value. The necessity for giving an external expression to this contrast for the purposes of commercial intercourse, urges on the establishment of an independent form of value, and finds no rest until it is once for all satisfied by the differentiation of commodities into commodities and money. At the same rate, then, as the conversion of products into commodities is being accomplished, so also is the conversion of one special commodity into money. (footnote to section: From this we may form an estimate of the shrewdness of the petit-bourgeois socialism, which, while perpetuating the production of commodities, aims at abolishing the “antagonism” between money and commodities, and consequently, since money exists only by virtue of this antagonism, at abolishing money itself. We might just as well try to retain Catholicism without the Pope. For more on this point see my work, “Zur Kritik der Pol. Oekon.,” p. 61, sq.)"

where we dropping boys?

If ya ain't dropping max level wildy with 3 million in gp then don't you fucking talk to me or my son ever again

The Vampire princes

hey yo I'd write a post here but I'm trying to prepare a post for one of my RPs which seems to have me making a deep dive into what's turning into researching the strangely difficult subject of hunting in China.

i dont want trophy hunting google pls no stop

Once I get that post done I'll make an IC post here in case the GM is worried.