Emeth

Shadow Contract: A Demon-Slaying Action RP

This looks good and I have a character concept, are you still accepting?

@LuckyBlackCat

We meet again, for the third time. Can't wait to see what you have up your sleeve!

Emeth is in Too Many RPs (Indefinitely Closed)

Let's-a-go. Bob-ump. Just what I needed!

Shadow Contract: A Demon-Slaying Action RP

Thanks for having me! This turned out to be a bit of an adventure. I hope it wasn't a bother for you.

Shadow Contract: A Demon-Slaying Action RP

• Name: Federica Simonova (Nickname: Rika)
• Age: 23
• Gender: Female
  
• Personality: Willfully accepting the "weird and loud" foreigner stereotype, she makes zero effort to hide her Russian accent, securing her role as the oddball of the group. She likes to think that binding herself to this role lets other, shier people feel more free to express themselves a little more. Breaking the ice with extreme prejudice, she wears a smile that could melt the ice caps, lives to spite the concept of personal space, and makes it her mission to make others smile, or even better, laugh. She can't resist the call to help others in need; she's the type to buy a sweater for a friend just because they said they were cold. Though she dislikes conflict, especially between friends, she is no pacifist; she has a strong sense of justice and difficulty holding her tongue about it. Firmly believes the old proverb that the fastest way to a person's heart is through the stomach. Loves giving food and receiving food—preferably sweets. A bit openly jaded about romance—and secretly a cynical person in general, though few would ever suspect it.
• Skills: A beautician by trade, occasionally dabbling in embroidery. Played basketball and did judo in high school, but can no longer do either. Loves cooking and running (and when no one is looking, DDR). Quick on her feet and has lots of stamina and endurance. Decidedly not muscular, but thanks to her Shadow Contract, she's far more durable than her frail-looking frame would suggest.
• Contracted Shadow: Azazel, the Scapegoat
• Contract Type: Possession
• Contract Rank: B
• Contract Ability - Chôshek Rethuqah (Chains of Darkness):

"Bind Azazel hand and foot and cast him into the darkness: and make an opening in the desert – which is in Dudael – and cast him therein. And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there forever, and cover his face that he may not see light. The whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin."

The Book of Enoch

Me'od: By possession of Azazel, Rika's body gains a modest increase in her general combat capability, but the biggest change to highlight is her endurance. She can take a lot of punishment, and use her other skills to dish some of that right back. The state of mind brought upon her during it also dulls her emotions and facial expressions, making it easier to blend in with her summoned decoy dolls.

Semikhah: By laying her hand on an ally, Rika can heal their injures and remove maladies from them, turning them into a curse engraved on her hand. This curse can then be placed by her summoned spirit hand onto enemies, who will then suffer instead. If she does not do this quickly enough, Rika will instead suffer a lesser version of her ally's former injury or malady. She can also heal herself, but if she fails to pass the curse along, her condition will instead get worse every time.

Yad Châshab: Rika can summon a forearm-shaped protrusion of spiritual energy from her left arm. It can vary in size and length to grapple with enemies, place curses on them, and do anything else a giant fist should be able to do, like use an oil barrel as a stand-in for a roll of quarters, and pound cars into scrap. It also comes adorned with black chains, with jagged rocks stuck in its links. These can be used to whip, bind, or constrict enemies until death.

Azazel: Summons autonomous, sacrificial decoy dolls of Rika or any of her other allies that might be targeted. When the decoys are attacked, they explode, dealing heavy damage to their attacker, and negligible damage to Rika. Multiple dolls can be summoned, but as more of the same type are summoned, the less convincing they become. The tactic remains extremely effective against large crowds of unintelligent Beasts.

• Brief Backstory:
  Grew up in an under-served area of Tokyo, populated mostly by foreigners like her. This is the cause attributed to the tragedy that took place there. A Devil appeared at the same time that a Titan had appeared in Shibuya, headed towards Aoyama—in the opposite direction of her home. Both were accompanied by scores of Beasts for minions—the local DDF simply didn't have the resources to manage both disasters, and gave it their all to stop the one. Many of Rika's friends and neighbors would die in the ensuing chaos. Rika used everything she had available to defend herself and her mother: a crowbar, the fire extinguisher—and a desperate gambit with a propane tank—but it was all very nearly useless. Her mother would barely survive and spend the rest of her life bound to a wheelchair. Rika herself was hospitalized, losing an arm to the propane explosion, partial movement of her other hand to nerve damage, and spent four days in a coma.
  
  

  ---

  
  During her slumber, many beings would visit her in her dreams, drawn by the desperate fury that still lingered in her mind, knowing that help had never come, and that Devil that had destroyed her life had gotten away with it. Believing falsely that she was at death's door, she would refuse them all; she wouldn't make a deal with a Devil. However, one creature would catch her eye—one bound in chains of darkness—the fallen angel, Azazel. As Rika's life flashed before her eyes, the angel watched, and had pity. All the days of her life, she had been a scapegoat; the weird, shy girl everyone made jokes about, the punching bag of the school bullies, the token Russian girl at the workplace mixer—and now, on what could have been her deathbed, a sacrifice to save her mother.
  
  "Does your compassion for these undeserving creatures have no end?" Azazel would ask her. "Why have you done all of this?"
  
  Rika shrugged. She had no good answer to the angel's question. "The way I was raised, I suppose."
  
  "Ah. Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it. Proverbs 22 I believe."
  
  "I don't suppose demons quote scripture much, do they? Fine, I'll bite. What did you do to end up like this?"
  
  "I married a human woman," Azazel said simply.
  
  "Oh," Rika replied, nonplussed. "Kinda seems like disproportionate retribution."
  
  "On this, we can agree—and relate. Your fate, too, is undeserved. I shall preserve your life. You require a hand, and power to destroy your enemies. I will give you both. Only this will I require in return: you shall be my eyes, that I might see the world once more."
  
  

  ---

  
  When next she woke up, Rika learned the full extent of the damage to her body. She tried to move her hand, to reach for a nearby glass of water, but couldn't quite get it to work. The feeble grasping motion she was able to do wasn't enough to confidently hold it. Her other arm was gone from the elbow down. Her other arm, though, was able to lift the much-needed water to her lips.
  
  "Pffpptt!" Rika coughed, as the grogginess lifted and the whole "third arm" thing settled in her mind.
  
  Later that day, Rika would learn of the carnage left behind by the Devil—who died, and what happened to survivors like her—but she refused to be broken by the news. Unlike her mother, she could still walk—at least, that's how she thought at first. It would take months for her body to heal, and additional weeks of physical therapy before she could actually do it. She pushed through, with just one thing on her mind. "I'll kill them... I'll kill them all," she'd tell herself as she struggled, from hospital bed to shower and back again, relying on her phantom limb only to save herself from falling, in the hopes of regaining the use of her legs as soon as possible. She refused a prosthetic arm, for the simple practical reason of not really needing one, and not wanting to have to remove and clean it all the time just to look a bit more "normal." She was a foreigner living in Japan; how "normal" could she be?
  
  The local DDF had been informed of her new abilities, and almost as soon as she was discharged from the hospital, they offered Rika a job with them—but she refused. Unwilling to trust the DDF, believing that their negligence was responsible for what happened to her life and community, she hunted demons on her own for a few years, looking for the Devil that destroyed her home. The understaffed local branch was, approximately, happy to have her unofficial assistance in covering the area, but the locals who witnessed her work firsthand were a bit more notably unenthusiastic about the creepy girl with the bloody spirit-hand and exploding dolls. Some said her presence there was just one more reason why the DDF wouldn't come to help them, if such a thing ever happened again. A few encouraged her, but not enough to drown out the negative voices. Despite the lack of appreciation, she continued her hunt for the Devil. In the end, it hardly mattered. Her final solo mission was a botched job involving several Monsters that resulted in significant damage to the district's infrastructure, and would have cost her life if the DDF hadn't shown up to save her from succumbing to her injuries after the fact. The DDF then offered her a choice: join them, and be trained properly, or be forced to stop. She still hasn't found the Devil who killed her friends, so she chose to join.

Shadow Contract: A Demon-Slaying Action RP

Fair question. The interpretation I chose is that he was one of the Watchers from the Genesis 6 conspiracy, which is expanded on in the Book of Enoch. The group of fallen angels tried to usurp the children of Adam's dominion on earth by claiming to be gods, and marrying the daughters of men in exchange for forbidden knowledge which the humans of the time were trying to learn. This gave rise to the nephilim (giants) which ruled the earth from human thrones for a while until the flood wiped them out. These were "mighty men of old, men of renown," analogous to Greek heroes. The Watchers were pretty high ranking angels. Power wise, he should be on roughly the same level as an Asura or Titan.

Edit: the abilities are based on a combination of the punishments of the Watchers, the Hebrew rituals surrounding Azazel (imputing the sins of the Israelites onto a goat for sacrifice), and the theme of "scapegoat" in general.

Shadow Contract: A Demon-Slaying Action RP

It's pretty funny that one of the Asura was apparently infamous for such vile acts as giving food to sinners, and engaging in wrestling. Sounds like a swell guy.

Azazel really started to grow on me, though, so I took a crack at it.

Federica Simonova

• Name: Federica Simonova (Nickname: Rika)
• Age: 23
• Gender: Female
  
• Personality: Willfully accepting the "weird and loud" foreigner stereotype, she makes zero effort to hide her Russian accent, securing her role as the oddball of the group. She likes to think that binding herself to this role lets other, shier people feel more free to express themselves a little more. Breaking the ice with extreme prejudice, she wears a smile that could melt the ice caps, lives to spite the concept of personal space, and makes it her mission to make others smile, or even better, laugh. She can't resist the call to help others in need; she's the type to buy a sweater for a friend just because they said they were cold. Though she dislikes conflict, especially between friends, she is no pacifist; she has a strong sense of justice and difficulty holding her tongue about it. Firmly believes the old proverb that the fastest way to a person's heart is through the stomach. Loves giving food and receiving food—preferably sweets. A bit openly jaded about romance—and secretly a cynical person in general, though few would ever suspect it.
• Skills: A beautician by trade, occasionally dabbling in embroidery. Played basketball and did judo in high school, but can no longer do either. Loves cooking and running (and when no one is looking, DDR). Quick on her feet and has lots of stamina and endurance. Decidedly not muscular, but thanks to her Shadow Contract, she's far more durable than her frail-looking frame would suggest.
• Contracted Shadow: Azazel, the Scapegoat
• Contract Type: Possession
• Contract Rank: B
• Contract Ability - Chôshek Rethuqah (Chains of Darkness):

"Bind Azazel hand and foot and cast him into the darkness: and make an opening in the desert – which is in Dudael – and cast him therein. And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there forever, and cover his face that he may not see light. The whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin."

The Book of Enoch

Me'od: By possession of Azazel, Rika's body gains a modest increase in her general combat capability, but the biggest change to highlight is her endurance. She can take a lot of punishment, and use her other skills to dish some of that right back. The state of mind brought upon her during it also dulls her emotions and facial expressions, making it easier to blend in with her summoned decoy dolls.

Semikhah: By laying her hand on an ally, Rika can heal their injures and remove maladies from them, turning them into a curse engraved on her hand. This curse can then be placed by her summoned spirit hand onto enemies, who will then suffer instead. If she does not do this quickly enough, Rika will instead suffer a lesser version of her ally's former injury or malady. She can also heal herself, but if she fails to pass the curse along, her condition will instead get worse every time.

Yad Châshab: Rika can summon a forearm-shaped protrusion of spiritual energy from her left arm. It can vary in size and length to grapple with enemies, place curses on them, and do anything else a giant fist should be able to do, like use an oil barrel as a stand-in for a roll of quarters, and pound cars into scrap. It also comes adorned with black chains, with jagged rocks stuck in its links. These can be used to whip, bind, or constrict enemies until death.

Azazel: Summons autonomous, sacrificial decoy dolls of Rika or any of her other allies that might be targeted. When the decoys are attacked, they explode, dealing heavy damage to their attacker, and negligible damage to Rika. Multiple dolls can be summoned, but as more of the same type are summoned, the less convincing they become. The tactic remains extremely effective against large crowds of unintelligent Beasts.

• Brief Backstory:
  Grew up in an under-served area of Tokyo, populated mostly by foreigners like her. This is the cause attributed to the tragedy that took place there. A Devil appeared at the same time that a Titan had appeared in Shibuya, headed towards Aoyama—in the opposite direction of her home. Both were accompanied by scores of Beasts for minions—the local DDF simply didn't have the resources to manage both disasters, and gave it their all to stop the one. Many of Rika's friends and neighbors would die in the ensuing chaos. Rika used everything she had available to defend herself and her mother: a crowbar, the fire extinguisher—and a desperate gambit with a propane tank—but it was all very nearly useless. Her mother would barely survive and spend the rest of her life bound to a wheelchair. Rika herself was hospitalized, losing an arm to the propane explosion, partial movement of her other hand to nerve damage, and spent four days in a coma.
  
  

  ---

  
  During her slumber, many beings would visit her in her dreams, drawn by the desperate fury that still lingered in her mind, knowing that help had never come, and that Devil that had destroyed her life had gotten away with it. Believing falsely that she was at death's door, she would refuse them all; she wouldn't make a deal with a Devil. However, one creature would catch her eye—one bound in chains of darkness—the fallen angel, Azazel. As Rika's life flashed before her eyes, the angel watched, and had pity. All the days of her life, she had been a scapegoat; the weird, shy girl everyone made jokes about, the punching bag of the school bullies, the token Russian girl at the workplace mixer—and now, on what could have been her deathbed, a sacrifice to save her mother.
  
  "Does your compassion for these undeserving creatures have no end?" Azazel would ask her. "Why have you done all of this?"
  
  Rika shrugged. She had no good answer to the angel's question. "The way I was raised, I suppose."
  
  "Ah. Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it. Proverbs 22 I believe."
  
  "I don't suppose demons quote scripture much, do they? Fine, I'll bite. What did you do to end up like this?"
  
  "I married a human woman," Azazel said simply.
  
  "Oh," Rika replied, nonplussed. "Kinda seems like disproportionate retribution."
  
  "On this, we can agree—and relate. Your fate, too, is undeserved. I shall preserve your life. You require a hand, and power to destroy your enemies. I will give you both. Only this will I require in return: you shall be my eyes, that I might see the world once more."
  
  

  ---

  
  When next she woke up, Rika learned the full extent of the damage to her body. She tried to move her hand, to reach for a nearby glass of water, but couldn't quite get it to work. The feeble grasping motion she was able to do wasn't enough to confidently hold it. Her other arm was gone from the elbow down. Her other arm, though, was able to lift the much-needed water to her lips.
  
  "Pffpptt!" Rika coughed, as the grogginess lifted and the whole "third arm" thing settled in her mind.
  
  Later that day, Rika would learn of the carnage left behind by the Devil—who died, and what happened to survivors like her—but she refused to be broken by the news. Unlike her mother, she could still walk—at least, that's how she thought at first. It would take months for her body to heal, and additional weeks of physical therapy before she could actually do it. She pushed through, with just one thing on her mind. "I'll kill them... I'll kill them all," she'd tell herself as she struggled, from hospital bed to shower and back again, relying on her phantom limb only to save herself from falling, in the hopes of regaining the use of her legs as soon as possible. She refused a prosthetic arm, for the simple practical reason of not really needing one, and not wanting to have to remove and clean it all the time just to look a bit more "normal." She was a foreigner living in Japan; how "normal" could she be?
  
  The local DDF had been informed of her new abilities, and almost as soon as she was discharged from the hospital, they offered Rika a job with them—but she refused. Unwilling to trust the DDF, believing that their negligence was responsible for what happened to her life and community, she hunted demons on her own for a few years, looking for the Devil that destroyed her home. The understaffed local branch was, approximately, happy to have her unofficial assistance in covering the area, but the locals who witnessed her work firsthand were a bit more notably unenthusiastic about the creepy girl with the bloody spirit-hand and exploding dolls. Some said her presence there was just one more reason why the DDF wouldn't come to help them, if such a thing ever happened again. A few encouraged her, but not enough to drown out the negative voices. Despite the lack of appreciation, she continued her hunt for the Devil. In the end, it hardly mattered. Her final solo mission was a botched job involving several Monsters that resulted in significant damage to the district's infrastructure, and would have cost her life if the DDF hadn't shown up to save her from succumbing to her injuries after the fact. The DDF then offered her a choice: join them, and be trained properly, or be forced to stop. She still hasn't found the Devil who killed her friends, so she chose to join.

Gods of the Multiverse

Sure, I can send you something when I'm not on the clock (oops) and have time to write something a bit longer.

Gods of the Multiverse

Okay, so, here's my two cents on the table. We don't know what happened with Martian, but I have run into situations in the past where GMs have flipped the table and deleted everything when their thread got hijacked. Not here, but on other places.

I would consider making a new thread, so the new GMs keep moderation tools, and put enough of a spin on the original idea so that there's not as much drama if the OP comes back. Basically a non plagiarized OoC post that's still compatible with the current cast, with minimal edits if any to character sheets. I'd be willing to help brainstorm on this if needed. Co-GM is a lot less pressure for me.

This is just my take though. Don't smite me please.

Shadow Contract: A Demon-Slaying Action RP

Thanks. I'll look into it when I go on lunch.

What should an interest check do to convince you?

Honestly, not much. Half the work is done by other players. The first time I read the OP, I'm skimming for the most important information about the setting, then I'm heading straight for the approved character sheets. If the characters seem fun to interact with, I might join just for that. If the GM is approving overpowered characters with hilariously dumb backstories, that's a deal-breaker. Likewise, if the GM's own character gives me "main character" vibes, then they'd better be cooked to perfection. If the GM's character is basically godmodding in their own backstory, that's an instant nope. I am 100% reading everything in the character tab before I commit to pitching my own. Maybe that goes beyond the scope of the question being asked here, but I think it's an important part of how I decide if I'll play or not.

If the characters look good, I'll re-read the OP, looking for details I might have missed the first time. Primarily what I need are some consistent themes and tone to bounce off of. I like to make thematically designed characters, with appearance, personality, history and skills that make sense together. Uniquely original settings are great for this, but not required. Not every character in every story needs to grow and change, but I do like to include that, so if there's opportunity to create a character who's in over their head, that's also a plus for me. As long as I have a vague concept for a character in mind by the time I'm done reading, you probably have me.

Which leads into the other major thing I'm looking for: some kind of interesting conflict. I love a good dialogue between well-defined characters with different mindsets. Verbal sparring with precisely-chosen words dripping with subtext is the kind of thing that's hard to do if there's no kind of conflict going on. For me, the more complex the conflict, the better. I like it when characters with wildly different motivations can come together for something, though if that something is saving the world in some generic sense, I might pass. Sometimes, actually maybe a lot of the time, lower stakes and highly personal conflicts are just more interesting.

As for additional plot details... I don't mind if some aspects of an interest check are intentionally left vague to set up some kind of reveal later, but if it looks like the main thrust of the story won't be explained until well after the thread is underway, I probably won't sit through the opening fluff to find out if the GM actually has plans or is just making stuff up as they go. Other than that, not picky.

Setting is also a whatever. Worldbuilder's disease is a thing though. I'll read a good wall of text if it's written well and interests me, but that's a risk you're taking there. You could have the coolest setting on the forum but if nobody joins because TL;DR, it doesn't really matter. It's also a waste of a good setting if the characters, conflict and story are so boring that everybody quits. Easy 4th place for me.

After I read the OP and the character tab, I'm reading the rest of the thread. What the GM doesn't approve and why, and whether or not you agree with their decisions will tell you a lot about whether or not you'd enjoy their RP. It's all there if you look for it, and I don't think it's entirely unfair to draw reasonable expectations from it. I have a soft "rule of three" when it comes to the whole character design process. If I can't come up with an idea that I'm totally in love with after 3 cracks at it, or the GM shoots me down 3 times, I bow out. Likewise, if multiple people made characters that I liked and they all got shot down, I'll take my keyboard and go home, thanks.

I guess I could mention some 1x1 interest check specifics too. I read basically all of them—sometimes for my own sick amusement—but the ones I skim through most quickly are the ones with vague or done-to-death premises that demand smut up front, and/or give nothing but a list of pairing prompts and a list of kinks. I'm also a bit tougher on grammar when reading 1x1 threads. I've done a few good RPs with one or two players whose posts were basically an unintelligible mess, but I'm gonna need more than coffee to survive that if I only have one partner.

This post probably reads as more critical than I mean to be. I'll add a disclaimer that I'm not talking to or about anyone in particular. But I do think there's a lot of lurking going on here. It's "safer" to get sold on someone else's idea than to try and sell your own and be down in the dumps because nobody seems interested. So, to summarize all of this in a feel-good statement at the end, as long as your OoC is coherent and makes some kind of concrete promise about the kind of story you want to tell, and the characters you approve as GM are fun and interesting to play with, the actual A to B plot threads and micro level details of the setting don't actually matter to me that much.