Emeth — Roleplayer Guild

Interesting. So she's an Astra with a telempathy kind of power. Emma from Mutant-X had a telempathy power, so it could work. I think the way you described it is lovely and you'd be surprised what she could do in combat. She's a support role on the battlefield. She could use her telepathic threads to boost the teams morale, help two bickering teammates work better as a team, help someone whose given up to get back up and fight again. Don't shoot yourself short. :) In fact, with her spending so much time in the infirmary, maybe she can take up an apprenticeship under the nurse and become somewhat of the field medic during battles. But yes, I think whenever we're dealing with psychic powers that can influence others, we want to be wise and use that gift with caution if its to be used on other player-controlled characters. Perhaps getting permission on the front end is the best policy if not being used on an NPC.
Officially she'll be a Psychiccer. I'm actually not sure what she should be. I think both of her abilities fit into the category, but you did say almost all Mystics with The Kiss end up classified as Astras, and maybe the musical Ephemera (they have a name now) qualify as abstract enough to make the grade. I'll leave it up to you. I wanted something more clearly defined in its limitations to not raise many concerns about metagaming. I don't like the self-inserty "my characters know everything that I've read in your posts" kind of mind-reading.

I actually hadn't considered the bard angle, which is weird given the musical inspiration of plucking the strings. True, if push comes to shove she won't shy away from using her power to avert a crisis of faith in the group's leader or stop some infighting. Convincing someone to get back up and fight is a bit harder since I hadn't considered the possibility of one's relationship with themselves being a visible thing Thanh (she has a name now) could interact with. I could make ideas like self-esteem and confidence valid targets, but then I think I risk trivializing entire character arcs with that, just by everyone knowing Thanh could just solve it if she really wanted to. Learning first aid is an option; I was going to have her apprentice with the librarian because cute bookworm but I'll have to consider it. Also, a school counselor NPC ended up in her backstory, so maybe she could apprentice under them if that's an option that exists.

Permission is definitely something I'm looking for. It's baked in to the ability description that she's not skilled enough to get a string to 'sing' a person's thoughts to her consistently, so whether or not she can actually shake anything loose from them is completely up to the player whose character is being probed for information. If Thanh gets approved, everyone else should assume their character's thoughts are private until they tell me otherwise. Emotions are much easier to get but that's okay, she'll definitely keep your unrequited love a secret.

The Second Ability is cool too. Reminds me of an X-men character called ForgetMeNot, who had the power of imperceptibility. Though I think it's good that you put some limitations on it to keep it grounded. :) And I think it's possible she could use it to attend more than six classes. What she'd be doing is similar to what Hermoine did with the time-turner. Yeah, most Mystic's with the Seraph's Kiss keep one of their gifts hidden, IF POSSIBLE. Some people can't due to the nature of their magic. The school staff and Headmistress would definitely know about one of her gifts (I imagine the telempathy), how else would she be at the academy right if they didn't already know beforehand? lol
The Erasure ability (it has a name now) is the second ability she developed, but the first one to be discovered and the only one known to anyone except her and maybe the aforementioned counselor, along with anyone else on the "need-to-know" list. It surely has to come out eventually, but maybe not before the RP. Erasure might actually have too many downsides so I'd be interested in your opinion on it.

Time-turner is exactly what I was thinking when I added that. Like I said, cute bookworm.

I should probably stop rambling and just give the rough draft:

Name: Thanh Nguyễn
Age: 14
Gender: Female
Height: 146 cm / 4' 10''
Weight: 45 kg / 99 lbs
Appearance:


House: Ivar
Year: 1st Year
Chosen Uniform: Fourth from the left, bottom row
Chosen Pet: A Gupoo named "Pooka"
Classes: Astronomy
Sustained Flight
Gifts (Learning Erasure)
Herbology
Cartography
Pet Bonding (Attending in Secret)
Music (Attending in Secret)
Apprenticeship and Support (Nurse/Librarian/Counselor)

Mystic Classification: Officially, a Psychiccer
Mystic Code: Erasure
	Thanh possesses the gift to erase her presence from the perception of others. This ability shares a few advantages with traditional invisibility, but also possesses a few unique strengths and weaknesses. On one hand, even her breath and footsteps cannot be heard, which is a bonus. On the other, passing in front of a strong light source will probably give her away by her shadow—and once her presence has been detected, she becomes fully perceptible again, and will remain so until she can break line of sight with all of her pursuers. Her ability also doesn't quite work unless there are at least 3 people in a room. If it's just her and one other person present, the other person will feel a sensation akin to 'being watched' which will foil Thanh's cloaked state. Currently, this ability usually triggers while she's sleepwalking or in fight-or-flight, leaving her unable to observe the world around her in a grounded, objective sense while cloaked. Most of her current training involves learning to become more 'lucid' while the cloak is active, so that the ability can be practically applied to reconnaissance and espionage. As she is now, it would simply be foolish to actually send her on such a mission. She's too inexperienced to obtain useful, accurate intelligence, and remain safe while doing so.

Mystic Code: Ephemera
	Thanh can perceive the connections between people, mapped like constellations, visually represented as a complex web of threads perceivable only by her. The threads vary in color, texture, thickness and strength, and by touching them, Thanh can directly feel the emotions others feel towards each other—including any feelings they might have towards herself. By plucking the strings like an instrument, she may be able to hear the thoughts of the people connected by it, but she doesn't fully understand how to get this to work every time. (Read: participation in Thanh's 'thought-reading' is completely voluntary.) By implication, she should be able to manipulate these threads somehow, such as by strengthening or weakening them, or even outright creating new ones or destroying existing ones. However, Thanh is completely terrified of the implications of such a power—how she might use it to her advantage if tempted—or worse, how others may force her to use it, if they ever found out that she had this terrible gift. In fact, she believes that she's already seen what can go wrong if this is done improperly, and the resulting trauma left her extremely averse to the idea of ever touching those horrible threads ever again. Sometimes, however, an ambiguous face or comment is made, and she just can't help herself. After all, what if that person is up to no good, and someone gets hurt? What if that person intends to harm her, or worse—harm themselves? What if she could have prevented it? Thanh finds it less painful to violate both their privacy and her own personal oath to answer these questions than to let the asking torment her, and so, she knows she must come to terms with the existence of this gift eventually. For now, she's content to use it to understand people better, and to help find missing people and lost pets.

Personality: Owing to her known status as a Psychiccer (and many additional secrets besides), Thanh is more than a little bit timid around strangers. Combining this with her small stature, her demeanor often reminds others of a small animal, even when forcing herself to act bold and confident. She's carefully chosen classes that require the least amount of human contact possible, while still satisfying her mother's conditions for what counts as a "real class," but is attending her own personal interests on the sly using Erasure. She's passionate about the things she's interested in and is often buried in books, though sometimes this burial is more literal and also an accident. She has some kind of heart issue that she won't talk about, and is prone to sleepwalking at all times of day and night while invisible, giving the staff a bit of a headache at times. She's often caught wandering the school grounds at night, wandering outside the school grounds, attending classes she's not supposed to be in while nobody notices her, and generally being truant or absent. Anyway, aside from these silly little hiccups (that totally aren't her fault), Thanh is generally a well-behaved girl with flawless attendance and a completely clean disciplinary record (self-proclaimed). Those who get to know her well will learn that she is a sweet thing who wouldn't hurt a fly, an indefatigable optimist who just wants to be accepted, and would travel to the ends of the earth with anyone who would welcome her presence in their life. Though, it's hard to offer warm welcome to someone whose very existence can't always be perceived. That's... a work in progress.

History:
.
	Thanh has had her magical gifts for at least six years, but nobody noticed until the regularly scheduled disappearances started. The first gift to manifest was Ephemera, and naturally, the first thing she decided to do with it was touch the threads connecting herself to her parents. It was a simple, curious act that any 8-year-old child would naturally do. She could directly feel the love flowing from them towards her, and it made her feel cozy and warm inside. Of course, this newfound power ended up being used whenever she felt down, and eventually she grew comfortable enough to try touching other threads.

	The connection between her parents didn't feel soft and warm like hers. The thread felt frayed and chafed her fingers. She tried strumming it, and the things she heard... Alien words met her ears, but she could feel the heat of anger. She tried everything she could think to do to repair the thread, which wasn't much, and nothing seemed to work. Dejected, she returned to her own threads, feeling warm and fluffy but defeated at the same time. Having abandoned the problem, it got worse. Quiet resentment escalated into observable arguments. Again, she tried what she could, but the arguments only seemed to get louder, so she again stopped.

	Feeling helpless, Thanh started to act out. She tugged harder on the threads connecting her to her parents, since they seemed stronger. Often, this resulted in one or both of the two going to her room to check on her. While it ended the arguments in the short term, it only seemed to make the problem worse in the long run. Eventually, she stopped touching the threads altogether, believing them to be the cause of all this trouble in the first place. In the end, she lost what she now realized had become her only source of warmth. Her deep sadness seemed to awaken something sleeping inside of her, and the next chapter of her life had begun.

	When Thanh saw her parents arguing, it was as if they couldn't see her anymore. She had gained her second magical gift, Erasure, but she could not know it at the time. What she did understand was that she'd have to scream now to get her parents to stop. This only made things even worse, so instead she started acting out by slipping out the window and running away. To her horror, her parents didn't even seem to notice or care about her coming and going. It was like she didn't even exist anymore. She was quickly spiraling into a deep depression, and hit rock bottom when the inevitable divorce that she'd ultimately blame herself for finally happened—but thankfully, she wouldn't have to wait long for things to change.

	By sheer, dumb luck that was surely owed to her by this point, a guidance counselor from Harold's Academy happened to be running errands in town when they caught Thanh suddenly bursting into tears and bawling her eyes out, shattering the illusion that had kept her hidden from right in front of their unsuspecting eyes. After some talk, it became clear that Thanh had had a magical gift for some time that had gone unnoticed, partly due to its very nature, and partly due to neglect at home. After a very difficult talk, Thanh learned that she would be required to attend the Academy to learn to better control her magical gifts.

	She expressed the natural concerns about leaving her home and her friends at her previous school, to which the counselor offered a lifeline in the form of an address she could mail letters to, as well as some very impressively detailed directions to their office. With their help, Thanh was able to work up the nerve to return home and inform her mother about her circumstances. She was confused, thinking that Thanh simply spent all of her time in her room these days and didn't want to be disturbed, not even realizing she'd been leaving home all this time. Thanh felt crushed by this reaction in spite of everything she'd just learned about her gift, but the counselor helped smooth things over.

	Thanh is looking forward to her new school, all things considered. Though it's a big change, she's choosing to welcome it, believing in her counselor's words that a new environment will help her to heal. Besides, going to a magic school sounds like fun! Aside from the keeping her Ephemera ability a secret, and her being formally known as a Psychiccer while secretly being an Astra with the Seraph's Kiss, and her mother high-key pressuring her to take the maximum amount of classes possible and excel in all of them, but aside from those things? Yes, aside from those things, she is very much looking forward to her new life as a Mystic!

I'm not the most active in group RPs but I've only ever seen one member of one Discord server from this site stir up trouble. They wrote some stuff that broke forum rules and kinda ignored the main plot in general, so I consider them a pretty special case. I've never used Discord for anything else except keeping in touch with a few RL friends, but I could imagine random servers for subreddits getting pretty toxic. It's not an issue I've run into with RPGuild though, but alas, I do a lot of lurking in the 1x1 section mostly, so my opinion might not be the most representative.

I'm working on my character now, actually. Her ability that falls in the telepath/empath category is something I've wanted to play for a long time but never found the right RP for it. Basically, she can see the connections between people, visually represented as threads of various colors, texture and thickness. By touching them, she can directly feel how others feel about each other, and by plucking them like a stringed instrument, she might hear a stray thought or two. By implication, she should be able to manipulate those threads somehow, like strengthening/weakening or outright creating/breaking them, but because of some childhood trauma, she has an extreme aversion to messing with them too much.

She has another ability which works kind of like a heavily nerfed version of Koishi's ability from the Touhou series. She can slip away from the collective consciousness of everyone around her and become imperceptible, but there's tons of limitations on it due to her inexperience. It's probably more comparable to being Anonymous/Blended in Assassin's Creed if you've ever played or watched one of those. Basically, if she does anything that's too high-profile (like tripping over her own two feet), her cloak fails and she becomes perceptible again. I have a cute idea that she could be using this ability to attend more than six classes on the sly, but let me know if that's chronologically impossible.

I currently have a half-baked idea that she has "The Kiss" but one of her aeonhearts is kinda funky, so she intermittently loses access to one of her abilities and a good chunk of her vitesse. She spends an unusual amount of time in the infirmary as a result, which could lead to some inconvenient questions being asked. I'm thinking she hasn't been found out yet since one of her abilities is an easily kept secret and the other helps her escape unwanted attention. I think making her a first year would be fun too so there's that in the cards.

So, a mixed bag of pretty powerful abilities with pretty powerful weaknesses, and unlikely to see combat (of her own volition).

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