Ersa93

Five of the Sky

(AKA I Wanna Get Off Mercurius' Wild Ride)

Brief overview:

A normal high school girl, a mysterious item/place that transports her to a completely different world where she learns that she has been chosen to bear a great power that could either save the local kingdom from their enemies or destroy the entire world. She meets those destined to protect her, goes on a quest, faces enemies who use dastardly tactics, learns about herself, and oftentimes finds love. Sometimes things end happily. Sometimes the protectors meet their deaths in brutal ways. Sometimes the girl returns home, unable to be with her love for the rest of her life. And sometimes, the girl meets with a dreadful fate.

And so it's gone in the world of Relgas as long as anyone can remember it. When the stars align, two of the Four Elemental Embodiments, must grant a portion of their powers to two opposing sides of a human conflict. The other two can either abstain from granting a human their power, or choose to do so, just a much smaller portion. This time, it is the Lord of the Skies, Mercurius' turn. He is still haunted by the unfortunate fate of his last chosen one and is determine to not let it happen again. His options are limited since direct divine intervention is not allowed. But Mercurius is known for being the most capricious and flexible of the Embodiments. He figures that if he can't intervention once he chooses his bearer, he'll just have to change up what kind of bearer he chooses. After all, there's plenty of other women who fit the requirements that aren't high schoolers.

A young college student from another world who was a tourist stopping by an old well while visiting a friend in Japan over the summer between semesters should do nicely.

Rules/Guidelines

What this isn't:
-A modern person brings a gun into a a pre-industrial setting and dominates every fight
-A mean spirited parody of the genre or its characters
-An edgy retelling/subversion of the genre
-A modern person fixes all the problems of said setting
-A completely meta adventure. There will probably be some lampshading, but it won't be a constant thing.
-A romance with the protagonist. Probably breaking a cardinal rule of the genre, but I think other types of relationships would be more interesting to explore.
-A power fantasy

What this is:
-A fun romp in a setting typical to the genre. There will be tweaks, of course, but everything should still feel familiar
-A focus on the synergy and relationships of the main characters; no one just fades into the background after their discovery episode
-Facing opponents who aren't 100% evil (the "opposing" group is a typical portal genre style protagonist group who has been told that you are the baddies)

Kinds of players I'm looking for:
-A small group of no more than four
-18+ (more for comfort reasons than anything else)
-Communicative: It's all right if small talk isn't your thing, just be willing to discuss things like plots and characters and keep others in the loop if replies are going to be held up for a while on your end
-Willingness to play NPCs (ie the "opposing" group. I don't mind playing the NPCs myself, but trying to keep up with at least six NPCs might be a bit much for my abilities). The technicalities of this can be discussed if anyone has a better solution.
-All the usual RP courtesy things

The World of Relgas

The land of Relgas is split up into four regions: North, East, South, and West. Each region has and Element Embodiment associated with it. While there is a cultural similarity that runs through all the regions, they can vary in things such as government set-up and laws along with variations on certain traditions.

The ones most involved in this scenario:

The Eastern Region:
This region is known for its might winds thanks to bordering warm ocean waters. The inhabitants harness this wind as a source of power to run various things (though nothing has been industrialized yet) such as mills to turn its plentiful wheat crop into flour, which is sold both locally and abroad. The region is the least united in terms of government. There is a seat of government in the most populated city of the region, Decurius, but the majority of the population is spread throughout the region, each with their own leader and additional laws besides the overall laws of the region. These leaders then in turn vote for a "king" to be the head and representative of the region, mostly in dealing with other regions or leading the region in times of war. Other regions view such a set up as too chaotic, and it is oftentimes said that anyone from the East is unreliable since it's hard to predict what they will feel like doing at the moment, a trait they share with their Embodiment, Mercurius. They are currently coming into conflict with the Southern Region.

The Southern Region:
This regions is known for its wetlands and torrential rainfall. The inhabitants have learned to use the water to advance their irrigation techniques and to cut and shape things that would otherwise be impossible to do so quickly, making them the primary provider of already shaped building materials such as stones. They are also known for their medicines and purifying techniques, some of which other places have adopted in order to have cleaner water. The bulk in the population of the region lies in Anap, the seat of the government. It is a huge city broken into several districts that have appointed governors reporting to one ruler whose rule is absolute. The recent dynasty has outlasted any of its predecessors by a large margin, making others wonder if the ruling family is somehow doing something to keep themselves in that position when even the successful ones died out by then. It is oftentimes said that someone from the South can shape anyone or anything into what they want with merely a word or a single action, so anything they say or do should come under scrutiny, much like their Embodiment, Appaanii. They are currently coming into conflict with the Eastern Region.

The Western Region: TBD if it comes into play

The Northern Region: TBD if it comes into play

The Elemental Embodiments

These are the very broad characteristics associated with them. The actual Embodiments themselves will eventually have NPC pages.
Mercurius
Associated Element: Air
Associated Direction: East
Associated Season: Spring
Associated Animal: Birds, especially raptors/other bird of prey
Associated Strength: Flexibility
Associated Flaw: Flighty
Status: Associated region is in conflict with Apaanii's region

Terriku
Associated Element: Earth
Associated Direction: West
Associated Season: Fall
Associated Animal: Beasts of burden, especially oxen
Associated Strength: Steadfastness
Associated Flaw: Obstinate
Status: Neutral

Apaanii
Associated Element: Water
Associated Direction: South
Associated Season: Summer
Associated Animal: Cetacea, such as Porpoises/Whales
Associated Strength: Cultivation
Associated Flaw: Manipulation
Status: Associated region is in conflict with Mercurius' region

Gahl
Associated Element: Fire
Associated Direction: North
Associated Season: Winter
Associated Animal: Reptiles, especially lizards
Associated Strength: Creativeness
Associated Weakness: Recklessness
Status: Neutral

The Chosen One

Name: Cassidy “Cassie” O’Shea

Gender: Female

Age: 19

General Physical Description: Medium-length blond hair, green eyes, average build, 5’4”; currently wearing jeans, canvas shoes, a plain T-shirt, and a denim jacket

Role: Mercurius’ Chosen One

Abilities/Formal Knowledge:
-Being an architecture student, she is good at math, especially geometry.
-Technical drawing: while by no means an artist (bad things happen when she attempts to draw people), she can usually draw instructions clearly enough
-Navigation: It is hard for her to get lost and she is handy with maps and other navigation devices

Personality:
Positive:
-Rational: She likes thinking through and knowing as many facts as she can before making decisions
-Straightforward: Cassie will not tip-toe around a subject and doesn’t beat around the bush. She wants to go from point A to point B and nothing more.
-Down-to-earth: Has no real ego to speak of, doesn’t want her presence to be a big deal

Negative:
-Closed-off: Cassie doesn’t make friends easily and is not very open. She does become more open with time, but it takes a while. But once she lets someone in, they’re in deep.
-Impatient: She doesn’t like waiting around and will often get agitated if something that needs to be done isn’t done.
-Unadventurous: She has things she likes to stick to. It’s hard to get her to deviate from plans or for her to seek out new things on her own.

Public Knowledge:
Hailing from Arkansas, Cassie is currently on summer break. She was invited to Japan by her best friend who she went to school with when they were younger and kept in contact with even after they moved back. The fact that she agreed to visit, much less even considered going on an international trip, was a big step for her. She’s known for being invisible in social situations and hard to have small talk with, though most will agree that she’s perfectly polite, just quiet and distant. The few friends she has knows she does care deeply about things certain things, she just isn’t the most expressive person.

Five of the Sky (A Fanstay Portal Adventure)

Another bump. I'll start setting up the ooc and character app stuff next week most likely.

Ersa's Half-Baked Ideas

Bump

Five of the Sky (A Fanstay Portal Adventure)

Bump

Ersa's Half-Baked Ideas

Thump

Five of the Sky (A Fanstay Portal Adventure)

A normal high school girl, a mysterious item/place that transports her to a completely different world where she learns that she has been chosen to bear a great power that could either save the local kingdom from their enemies or destroy the entire world. She meets those destined to protect her, goes on a quest, faces enemies who use dastardly tactics, learns about herself, and oftentimes finds love. Sometimes things end happily. Sometimes the protectors meet their deaths in brutal ways. Sometimes the girl returns home, unable to be with her love for the rest of her life. And sometimes, the girl meets with a dreadful fate.

And so it's gone in the world of Relgas as long as anyone can remember it. When the stars align, two of the Four Elemental Embodiments, must grant a portion of their powers to two opposing sides of a human conflict. The other two can either abstain from granting a human their power, or choose to do so, just a much smaller portion. This time, it is the Lord of the Skies, Mercurius' turn. He is still haunted by the unfortunate fate of his last chosen one and is determine to not let it happen again. His options are limited since direct divine intervention is not allowed. But Mercurius is known for being the most capricious and flexible of the Embodiments. He figures that if he can't intervention once he chooses his bearer, he'll just have to change up what kind of bearer he chooses. After all, there's plenty of other women who fit the requirements that aren't high-schoolers.

A young college student from another world who was a tourist stopping by an old well while visiting a friend in Japan over the summer between semesters should do nicely.

What this isn't:
-A modern person brings a gun into a a pre-industrial setting and dominates every fight
-A mean spirited parody of the genre or its characters
-An edgy retelling/subversion of the genre
-A modern person fixes all the problems of said setting
-A completely meta adventure. There will probably be some lampshading, but it won't be a constant thing.
-A romance with the protagonist. Probably breaking a cardinal rule of the genre, but I think other types of relationships would be more interesting to explore.
-A power fantasy

What this is:
-A fun romp in a setting typical to the genre. There will be tweaks, of course, but everything should still feel familiar
-A focus on the synergy and relationships of the main characters; no one just fades into the background after their discovery episode
-Facing opponents who aren't 100% evil (the "opposing" group is a typical portal genre style protagonist group who has been told that you are the baddies)

Kinds of players I'm looking for:
-A small group of no more than four
-18+ (more for comfort reasons than anything else)
-Communicative: It's all right if small talk isn't your thing, just be willing to discuss things like plots and characters and keep others in the loop if replies are going to be held up for a while on your end
-Willingness to play NPCs (ie the "opposing" group. I don't mind playing the NPCs myself, but trying to keep up with at least six NPCs might be a bit much for my abilities). The technicalities of this can be discussed if anyone has a better solution.
-All the usual RP courtesy things

Kinds of characters:
-Preferably over 18 years old, but anything above 16 is fine
-Any gender
-Some fighting knowledge. They don't have to be a warrior, but they at least need to know how to wield a weapon of some type

Some suggested roles the characters can play:
-The brother/best friend figure (I have some ideas for this one, but they're not set in stone)
-The royal
-The scholar/sage/priest
-The outlaw/outcast
-The healer/doctor
-The warrior/soldier
-The strong one/tank
-Any other idea you might have. These are just suggestions.

And one last small favor. Please send a brief writing sample. It's less the length I'm concerned with and more of the style and flow. I've never run a group rp before so I want to make sure things don't clash too much. And to be fair, here are some samples from me.

Hider

Long Sample (probably mostly occurs with scene-setting posts or starting posts):

Chase, or Tank when in uniform, sighed as he observed the unfortunate scene around him. He’d been in the middle of making a delicious dish when the call came in about a metahuman incident. He shoved the half-finished product in the fridge, geared up, and made his way over to the area with a policeman who was kind enough to give him a lift. The B Team didn’t have money for a vehicle of their own, so they often bummed rides off whoever could give them one, usually someone from emergency services. Oddly enough, he was the only one called in. Probably for the best. Shadowstrike was once again off on one of her off the books prowling in the slums and Blaster was still recovering from expending a lot of energy the night before. He’d call Kay once he knew the situation.

The police were doing most of the investigating. Tank supposed he was mostly here to help provide crowd control or a shield if whoever did this was still around. He’d be able to take a few hits and buy time if someone more powerful needed to come and take care of it. Either that or Techton Enterprises didn’t think this was a big enough deal for one of the “main” heroes to appear. They certainly liked dumping the non-glamourous or attention getting jobs on them.

He had been talking to an officer when he noticed a car drive up and someone get out. “That would be Ms. Antonia Martinez,” the officer informed him. “The victims’ daughter.”

Now he knew why he’d been called here. No one on Team Techton either had time nor patience to deal with understandably upset and hurt relatives and he was such a good “people person” that this was just up his alley. It was probably a good thing the other B Team members weren’t here. Shadowstrike was often blunt to the point of hurtful even if she didn’t mean it and Blaster was bad at reading the room and might’ve made things worse despite his best intentions.

He barely felt her grab his shoulder plates. He knew how she felt, or at least had once felt the apparent despair that became visible. The officer he had been talking to stepped up to separate them, but Tank shook his head. She wouldn’t do any damage to him with her bare hands. He just wished that someone else would step up and give her the bad news. Someone trained for this sort of stuff.

“Ms. Martinez,” he spoke, softening his voice as much as he could. It made his Bristolian accent more pronounced. “We’re still investigating what happened, but the head investigator has some theories.” He nodded to the officer he had been talking to. The officer headed off to presumably go find the head of the investigation. “While we wait for them, why don’t we go sit down? I know that waiting for news is the hardest part.” His mind flashed back to waiting in a hospital lobby with his youngest sibling in his lap while his dad paced and the twins sniped at each other over a video game system.

He gently removed her hands from his shoulder plates and indicated the bumper of a nearby ambulance. “If it’s any consolation, they only found your parents’ bodies. All indications are that your brother is still alive.” But she probably wouldn’t be happy to hear the head investigator’s theory. “Would you like some water while we wait?” Even if she didn’t drink it, it would be good for her to have something in her hands. He’d even let her throw it at him if that made her feel better. He’d been hit with harder stuff than a water bottle before.

Shorter Sample (probably the length of my average post. Will vary if NPCs are included.)

The guns registered with Allison when he folded his arms and asked his question. She wasn’t sure what this particular ship’s policy on armed passengers had been, but it wasn’t unheard of for ships, especially if they were traveling through rough territory, to let their passengers keep their arms as long as they were visible. She made a note to watch him carefully.

“Well, can you name every planet a ship passes without a map?” She tried not to sound to annoyed that he responded to a simple question so rudely. “I’m Allison and who are…?

Then he started walking toward her, not looking too happy. Of course, the first person Allison could find had to be that way. After all, the universe was clearly against her right now. She scrambled back and to the side, only to realize that he was walking past her. She turned to see the smoking ruin of a spaceship. She was about to follow him when he started yelling at… well, nothing.

That meant two things to her. Either the man was crazy or he had an injury of some kind that was making him hallucinate. He almost seemed too well put together for the latter. Then came what he said after yelling at nothing.

Allison looked behind her. Maybe she should leave him and try to find someone else. After all, he was armed, he could probably take care of himself. But the logical side of her pinged in, reminding her that she was completely lost and not armed. He would be fine alone, but she probably wouldn’t. She almost missed his question.

“A wood and metal cube?” Allison eyed his hand on his holster. “No, I haven’t, at least not in the direction I came from. Did you have it on you when you landed or was it in a bag of some kind?"

If any of this interests you or you have questions (or even suggestions) please let me know through PM or here. The basic description of the setting and character app located here: https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/192086-five-of-the-sky/ooc

Ersa's Half-Baked Ideas

Le bump

Ersa's Half-Baked Ideas

Another bump

Ersa's Half-Baked Ideas

Another bump, this time with a weird Pokemon idea. The best I can summarize it is a platonic Beauty and Beast-esque scenario starring a Mewtwo and a scientist.

Ersa's Half-Baked Ideas

New year, slightly updated post