FujiwaraPhoenix

Echoes of a Moonless Night

Icelit Office — Morning

Akio and Fumi

Curiosity naturally overtook Akio as Suzume picked up her phone, but such whims were short-lived until the large youkai nearby shouted about Umeda Park. That, coupled with with Suzume's follow-up commentary once the call had ended, told the young man everything he really needed to know about the situation. Her prompt choice in taking the two pairs of newcomers made enough sense in context, of course, but that still left him waiting around for support staff to arrive anyways.

It was only after they had left, though, that he realized that both Kaeru and Nyoko were missing—the latter likely adding herself to the team on her own volition and bringing her partner along for the ride, or so he thought—which only left a scant four people in the office. After the initial rush of energy, a drop back down to 'saner' levels, though not necessarily unwelcome, was a bit disappointing.

It was at this point that a few more familiar faces came in to replace those that had left. One, a young woman who had her hair tied back in a ponytail in a blouse and skirt; the other, a slightly older man with slight stubble on his face and a jacket over his shoulder.

"I see that Takeda isn't here," the latter—a man by the name of Nishida Saito—said, hanging up his jacket taking a seat at his desk. "And there are less people here than expected. Would you mind filling me in?"

"I can do that," Fumi replied, straightening herself in her seat, "it seems that there was an incident at Umeda Park. The boss called Sato to bring help, and she chose to bring both of the newcomer pairs to location. Both Nakanishi and Nyoko chose to follow as well."

"Hm. That so?" he asked, booting up his computer and opening a slew a programs on the monitor in front of him. "Then I'll handle supporting them. Sakamori, do we have any jobs scheduled for today?"

To that, the young woman in question—one Sakamori Ayame—nodded and checked her own documents as her computer started up.

"Mmm... It looks like the big one was the apartment complex cleanup?" she said, glancing towards the two pairs remaining before looking back at the papers in front of her. "I think we should handle that since, well... Given the records we have on hand, putting it off for as long as the owners have might lead to some bigger problems down the line."

With that, Ayame handed a piece of paper to Fumi, who quickly skimmed it over before passing it towards Akio. A bunch of Grudges nesting within an old apartment complex was nothing new, but the fact that there was a string of murders inside before the residents who still lived there decided to move out or met less-than-savory fates...

Well, that was situation lifted right out of a horror movie.

"Mmm... Yeah, we should probably go clean this place up," Akio said before handing the paper off to Akane. "The sooner, the better."

@VitaVitaAR@RolePlayerRoxas

---

Umeda Park — Morning

Though somewhat far from the office on foot, a swift car ride towards the park before law enforcement had any time to set up any sorts of barricades meants that Suzume (and everyone with her) had easy enough access inside.

Well, as easy as it could be with all of the people attempting to swiftly leave the area by foot, at least.

Approaching the park would show what exactly it was that people were running from—black, formless creatures with vaguely humanoid shapes were slowing out from the park, striking out at whatever drew near enough. Most of the people seemed to be escaping well enough, but the danger of stampeding people was in and of itself a problem...

It was at this point that another call would quickly patch itself through to Suzume's phone, and Saito's voice on the other end—now on speaker—would speak up.

"Sato, this is Nishida. I've just sent a recon drone out to get you an aerial. Once it's in, I'll send the feed through to you; as usual, if you need anything else, let me know."

@Raineh Daze@VitaVitaAR@Zeroth@RolePlayerRoxas@Rune_Alchemist

Echoes of a Moonless Night

@SilverPaw@Vertigo: Both accepted.

Echoes of a Moonless Night

Icelit Office — Morning

Akio and Fumi

The next few minutes were spent in relative silence, with neither of the two present in the office really doing much beyond trying to kill time before the day started proper. Of course, that silence was not meant to last—not with the dialogue that the two could barely make out past the front door. The voices were all unfamiliar, but that only really meant that the aforementioned 'new hires' had likely arrived—and their subsequent entrance into the room turned that from simple assumption into fact. Three girls and a hulking beast of a youkai would most certainly make an impact upon entering, but given that they all seemed to be wrapped up in their introductions to one another, neither Akio nor Fumi really felt like interjecting quite yet.

Not that they really needed to, though—not with the resident succubus popping up and destroying any semblance of formality that the atmosphere in the room might have implied. Following after, of course, came a more familiar face to the two—one Suzume Sato—who, as usual, skipped the pleasantries and went straight towards talking about work.

"Morning to you, too," Akio replied, straightening his back as he turned to look towards the woman addressing him. "As for the plans today... I vaguely remember the boss saying that he was probably going to split us—"

Almost as if on cue, though, another more rambunctious pair sprang through the door, one following after the other in their usual routine. There was a brief pause as Akio stared at both Kaeru and Nyoko in mild annoyance before resuming.

"...Right. As I was saying, I vaguely remember the boss wanting to split us up—something about making sure that we could see how the newbies work in the field—but I think he should be here soon enough...?"

All the while, of course, Fumi had chosen to put her drink off to the side and stared quietly at the four newbies as they hovered about. There was something a bit off about the white-haired girl—though that was strictly her intuition speaking—to say nothing of the larger youkai and the girl sticking at his side.

Ultimately, though, they were going to be coworkers, which meant that introductions were most definitely in order.

"Well... Expect this sort of chaos to be the norm," she said after walking over to the pair and giving them all a slight bow. "Takenohara Fumi; my partner over there is Yatsujima Akio. Let's do our best together, hm?"

---

---

Now much more lively with the arrival of both the nekomata and her partner, time seemed to pass by a lot faster for Akio, who only realized the time once the final pair—and the only missing pair, at that—arrived with an apology about their lateness. The young man blinked for a moment as he glanced at the clock, only to see that they were only about ten minutes late.

Given how their boss tended to arrive precisely on time, though... That was an issue in and of itself.

"Well, for what it's worth, you didn't exactly miss anything yet?" Akio said, shrugging his shoulders as he gestured towards the newcomers. "Got new people here, though."

It was at this point, though, that a call would come through to Suzume's phone—one from their boss, Takeda Eiji. Once the Attuned picked up the call, though, Eiji's voice would begin to speak at a breakneck pace.

"Sato?" he asked once he heard a response from the other end, the sounds of running and screaming quite audible in the background. "There's been a Grudge outbreak at Umeda Park, and I need people here on the double. Leaving it to you to pick the team and come over; going to help evacuation in the meantime."

The park in question was a fair distance away, but being caught there would have indeed explained Eiji's absence. The matter of clearing the problem out in a timely manner, of course, was a different story.

@VitaVitaAR@Raineh Daze@Zeroth@RolePlayerRoxas@Rune_Alchemist

Echoes of a Moonless Night

Icelit Office — Morning

With a yawn and pair of arms stretched out over his head, Yatsujima Akio leaned back in his chair. It hadn't been more than a few months since he had been hired to work here at the company, but frankly speaking, it was somewhat more relaxing to him than the last few years had been at school. With that said, the stakes were a bit higher now; it was one thing to butt heads with a bunch of delinquents, who would at least stay down if you hit them enough, but having to head out and kill whatever the heck Grudges were was a different story.

It wasn't bad work, though, given what he was already used to doing. Fighting Grudges was certainly a different experience from fighting people, but the young man was certain he would grow used to that much soon enough.

Probably.

The feeling of a cold bottle against his cheek, though, caused Akio to almost spring forward towards the table on front of him. Though he was still seated, the shock was more that enough to wake him up for the moment. The reaction elicited a bit of an amused reaction from the person responsible—one Takenohara Fumi, his partner and teacher in one—but no more.

"Never gets old," the tengu remarked with a smirk, taking a sip of her drink—a bottle of green tea—and taking a seat nearby. "Stay up late?"

"More or less," he responded, rubbing his cheek as he stared at the bottle in mild irritation. "I'm sure I'll be fine once we're outside, though."

With a shrug, Fumi glanced at the door before placing her bottle of tea down.

"Well, once the boss and the ground staff arrive, we should be able to head out. I think there was supposed to be a set of new hires coming in, though, so we might be stuck here a bit longer than usual," she said, pulling out her phone to look at the time. "Doesn't help that we're a bit early, though."

"Point taken. Wish we had a training room or something to kill time, though..."

Echoes of a Moonless Night

@RolePlayerRoxas: Accepted.

@VitaVitaAR: Also accepted.

Echoes of a Moonless Night

@Zeroth: Little of column A, little of column B. The early should be more mission-centric, but plot threads should tie together and form arcs here and there.

While I'm here, though...

@Vertigo@SilverPaw: How goes form generation? Obviously, we're a little ways off starting, but it'd be nice to check in to make sure things are going all right there.

Echoes of a Moonless Night

@Zeroth: Yeah, I'd say both are fine now. Accepted.

Echoes of a Moonless Night

@VitaVitaAR: Right, looking things over... Think the character is mostly fine? Assuming that the starting power level is about on par with the rest of the cast, at least. So long as that approximate level is maintained for the moment, vampy accepted.

Echoes of a Moonless Night

@Zeroth: Once more unto the breach!

Mika first.

• Re: Personality stuff (again):
  I feel like the way she probes people out should have been explained better in the form in this case. Her outward-facing mannerisms make sense when presented in this context, but at a glance they didn't really read as such.
  Next point: I feel like if you want to have information hidden from the rest of the cast in a character, you contact the GM and discuss matters privately. A form (as I see it) is a third-person omniscient 'summary' of a character that other people (not just the GM) should have access to in order to understand the character, which means that you want to have most of the cards you want to play on the table when putting it up, so to speak. If it IS public knowledge, though, I think that it's reasonable to expect players to not metagame and know information that shouldn't explicitly be "public knowledge" in-universe.
  Third part loops back to the first; it's a lot easier to make sense of things (and leave other traits to be developed further) if that first part is made clearer.
• Honestly, names to differentiate them from the "standard" would be better in my opinion. You don't need to denote a barrier as something part of a "barrier style"; it's a barrier, and reiterating that fact would be redundant.
• I think that onmyoji would generally grow by either expanding those reserves or becoming more efficient in it's usage, yeah, but that's a bit of a smaller point to make here. Translating magical energy into ether is probably fine, though, given how traditionally onmyoji would have shikigami (like, the non-paper familiar types) anyways, so that's probably an okay route to go down.

Re: Kyozan:

• Levitation and airdashing is probably fine, but I'd definitely try to lean more into the 'skill/speed' over 'strength' relative to one another as a means of differentiation. Arrogance explanation is fine, though.
• Both are problems here. A relative timeframe as to how long he lived would make it easier to judge, but hitting that cap in the assumed timeframe definitely gets you noticed.
  With regards to the Big Three and a bit more quantification: I'm obviously using Shuten-Douji as a point of reference towards Kyozan specifically, and in-universe he would've had the capability to, say, cleave giant holes in the land with a single swing sort of deal, or bash through fortifications without worry—that sort of power, more or less. A canyon by the end of the fight, especially if it was large enough to be called a canyon in the first place would definitely place you on that level of power imo.
  An acceptable level of power, though... If we're talking late Heian Japan? Probably sacked a few cities on his own. Mass murder, destruction, the works. Maybe even took out a small army or something in the process; something like that.
• Regarding age: I'm using given age as a frame of reference. The closer we are to a proper number, the easier it is for me to gauge how strong or weak a youkai would/should be. Again, with 1000 years being late Heian Japan and the age being listed as 1000, things didn't exactly line up as well. The bigger problem in this isn't that he was sealed for all that time, but how strong he managed to get BEFORE being sealed... Which, like, we're sorta resolving anyways?
  I had initially mentioned the age not to argue the point that being older would make him stronger, but that he was way stronger than he should have been before being sealed. With the 150-year active lifespan as a point of reference (and a good chunk of that on the run from India all the way through China and into Japan, which sorta limits how much of a bloody trail he can afford to leave behind), he definitely had a higher floor than most of the cast (in his initial iteration, at least).
• Re: Motivations: I think it works better, but again, need that in the history section. Wasn't present in the initial draft. Also probably more elaboration as to why things changed, but that can be done fairly easily with this in mind.

Uh... Yeah, think that's about it on my end.

Echoes of a Moonless Night

@Zeroth: Right, form by form then.

Re: Mika:

• This bit:

  Though she’s petite, she’s also filled out rather nicely–and she knows it.

  Could probably be phrased a bit better. Yeah, that's how I'll put that. Could be phrased better.
• Personality seems like it clashes with itself. A girl who tends towards teasing while also shouldering the burden of a clan's livelihood on her shoulders doesn't quite add up; if her wish is to raise it back up, you'd sort of expect her façade to reflect that to some extent, right? A personality more in line with that of a gyaru's would reflect similarly, and in this SPECIFIC case where first impressions matter a lot, letting that "true self" bleed through in either direction (at least for starters) doesn't make much sense to me. In my eyes, the character needs to pick a direction and commit to it. That sorta applies to the whole form, honestly; pick a direction and stick with it instead of going 50/50.
• Onmyodo technique names: I humbly request you reconsider how these are named. For example, "Kekkai no Jutsu" literally translates to "Technique of Barriers"　or "Barrier Technique" (or, if you're really stretching it, Barrier Style or something like that). This is very much a 'me' problem in this context, but, like... Yeah. I'll just leave it at that.
  As for the actual usage of onmyodo... See, logically onmyoji and all that stuff should exist in the world, but in my head Attunement had only really started to come into being around the late Heian in Japan—so, like, around the events of the Genpei War, more or less. Onmyodo as a technique would likely be a line of techniques derived from using ether, and so would not require a Contract to use to begin with. Of course, not all humans should be able to use those techniques to begin with; maybe it'd be apt to call it a certain 'type' of ether that can be manipulated without outside interference only in certain individuals? That's probably the best way to explain it.
• Backstory... Hm. See, with the knowledge of how onmyodo should be, the story only half holds up... And, well, not just that, but also sort of doesn't match the personality (or, well, in my view, personalities) given?
  On one hand, we have the personality, which is (in my opinion) a clash of two personality types that don't make sense without context. On the other, we have the actual backstory, which... Is way more traumatic than I'd expect given the character's personality. You don't just recover from being backstabbed and seeing all your friends and family killed, much less to the point where you'd be able to tease and crack jokes with other people and be so open with them. You know, after a betrayal after doing exactly that?
  It just... Doesn't make sense. Then you have the other half of the personality to compare to: a desire to 'rebuild' and 'recover' the prestige of a clan. On the initial read, I assumed this to mean that they were 'in decline', not 'wiped out'. The former would make a lot more sense, especially in matters where pride and public perception are involved, but... That isn't really applicable in this context. You have a backstory that seeks vengeance after a devastating betrayal and a personality that makes it seem like the weight of her family rests on her shoulders AND an open enough personality to be affable with everyone, but... These three cannot all coexist within the same character.

Re: Kyozan:

• Uh... A 1000+ year old rakshasa? Let's start putting things into perspective.
  First, rakshasa bit. What bugs me more than anything with this section is that they're literally just described as 'oni, but better', which... Feels super off-putting to me? There are probably better ways to address the differences in this context without just going that route.
  And besides, it's not as if oni can't do all the things you say they can't. Oni who are smart, who can use magic, who can use more than just weapons of brute force... They existed and continue to exist in-universe. There's no reason they wouldn't, given the multitude of myths that state they can do just that. Being the traditional (and stereotypical) norm isn't quite right in the context of this world and the way it has developed, honestly speaking.
  Now, the age. '1000 years ago' translated into a more apparent year is approximately 1000AD (duh), which places us right around when Heian-era Japan was starting to decline. Now, a thousand years is a damn long time, obviously, but if we use that and reference a bit later in the form:

  Being sealed for hundreds of years by the Aomori Clan

  things get a bit weird. Now, while this does put us at the start of Attunement within Japan (relatively speaking), relationships between human and youkai would have still been pretty poor for at least a few decades (if not centuries) more. Where am I going with this?
  Well, as stated in the OP, a lot of ether's needed for a youkai to really start ramping up in power. That's a lot of kills. Racking up that amount of kills in that timeframe (as you put 1000+ and not, say, 1100+, I'm estimating it to be sub-100 years of chaos) solo is insane and rather unfeasible unless he really went ham murdering people... Which, again, paints a much bigger target on his back and probably has him approaching, like, famous named youkai status—doubly so if the battle left a canyon in it's wake. If he's older than 1000, though, even if by a factor of 100-200 years, that definitely puts him on Big Three level, which... Yeah, no, I'm not allowing that, even if they are depowered to some extent.
• Backstory. I get... Like, nothing reasonable here. Why was he sealed? Why does he have affection for the people who sealed him away? We get the destruction of the seal and the temple, but no meaningful reason behind the actions that he takes afterwards. A throwaway line about a promise or a vague allusion to watching generation upon generation of humans coming and going isn't enough to justify any of what I just mentioned. I don't have a clue as to why he was as strong as he was, or why he was designated to be hunted, or even why he took any of the actions that he did after popping out of the seal. I can assume, yes, but that assumption alone isn't enough to let me give the okay here. This is also assuming that the battle you allude to at the end of this section did not result in a complete rout, because if it did, there wouldn't be any 'vengeance' motivation in play for Mika.

That should sum up most of my thoughts on the forms.