Liliya

New to Arena. Looking for tutorial.

@Silver Carrot If you’re looking to learn the basics of combat roleplay in a narrative format, I would be happy to oblige you. For anything beyond the basics I would advise starting up a conversation with @Doc Doctor who is our resident artisan of bloodletting, and one of the most consistently imaginative and professionally developing combat roleplayers around. Not to speak for Doc, but I’m probably more willing to roleplay out art imitating life in this case if you want to learn the basics in a narrative rather than just throwing yourself into a thread which is probably what he’d suggest. Do you have an idea for a character/setting/power level or do you want to start from literal ground zero and build up a sheet as we go? I could work with whatever, even a meta “Lillya’s Avatar teaching Silver Carrot’s Avatar,” or disembodied voices flicking in and out of combat drills piloting faceless humanoid mannequins of flesh and bone in a constant state of block, hit, bleed or hit kind of thing.

Arena Chat Thread

I'd be happy to take you on @ImportantNobody but I'm kind of in the middle of writing an OOC. ^^ Feel free to check out the IC if you have any interest in post apocalyptic underground melee factions fighting over what resources are left in the world. Otherwise if you can hold off a week or so I could make a character to suit whichever of your characters you feel like using, just post a sheet and I'll write something up for you.

Sky is Over

Disclaimer: This is a Casual Arena Roleplay with faction/nation elements and some basic mechanics and maths worked into the background set in a post apocalyptic future of our irl world. Technology has basically reverted to pre-industrial age and the world is steadily starving to death as the sun has been blocked out by a seemingly permanent ash cloud. I figured I'd get that out of the way before you might have read through the whole page and decided an hour later that this didn't sound like it was for you, but if you're into that kinda thing like me I'd love to see you express interest and stick around for the OOC!

The Fluff

The Great Wizard of the Empire of the Crimson Throne was once asked by a woman of noble birth at an imperial ball why the world of the old ones burned away leaving those people who didn't die in the initial destruction cowering like rats in the sewers and deep, dark places of the land below and turned their steel and glass monoliths to desiccated ruins. His nature was a ponderous one, and nearly half the night and most of the party had passed before he deigned to answer in his somber, lonesome manner. He at last replied that it was said by some that the old ones had unleashed weapons like thunder numbering greater than the grains of sand in the Wastes upon one another, dooming themselves alongside their enemies to what they had assumed would be an absolute end to life on the planet entirely.

Others claimed that the world had been besieged by outsiders, creatures foreign and alien to the world, of steel and glass or of a reticulated pallor and stooped height who flew through the air like the birds of old once did, though on disks of steel whilst launching a barrage of toxic darts and projectiles upon the land below. The Cults and Evangelists claim that the old world had faced judgement by Goddesses or Gods too numerous to count in the retelling who had struck them down for deigning to create the monoliths so high as to touch their heavenly planes. A few hermit Wizards claim that the planet had simply grown too hot for its own good, and the Earth Mother's fever had burned away the parasites that plagued her, humanity included, much as the sick develop fevers to burn away the bad blood within.

The noble woman who had asked thanked him for his response, but noted that he had not spoken aloud which of these theories he subscribed to. The Great Wizard responded that the world of the old ones had passed because they had grown too concerned with the construction of their ever more skyward towers of steel and glass to notice the problems left unaddressed mounting up around them, just as the Empire was doing now. This was treasonous speech and without so much as packing his belongings the Wizard descended from his place at the dais and turned from the Empire, disappearing into the wastes. This was the night that the war began.

No one knows why the world of the old ones burned away, regardless of the Great Wizard's statements that night. What the wizards and elders across the Wastes do agree upon, however, is that the world was once a lush, green, vibrant paradise, trees grew tall as buildings and grass sprouted from the soft soil underfoot so far as the eye could see. Birds flew through the air, and rows of wheat were cultivated next to fields of cattle. This world is long since gone. The trees burnt away first, and the ash that was spawned from this World Fire took to the sky above never to fall back to the land below. With the virtual disappearance of the sun beyond the Ashen Curtain the grass, the wheat, and then the cattle all turned to desiccation and slow rot until one day there was no more, and never would be again. With the death of the wheat and the cattle, the loss of the forests and the perpetual twilight spawned from their ashes it is said that the Wizards of the Old World tried in a combined effort to turn the tides, releasing a plague upon the ash above in an effort to force it to fall back to the ground and reveal the sun clearly for all the world to see once more.

Millions of those left alive gathered in the outdoors, masked to stave off the worst of the smoke and ash and brimming with a hope that their world might be returned them. The skies fell, and the greatest combined cheer the world had ever heard erupted from every part of the world as their nightmare had at long last came to an end. It wasn't until it was too late that they realized what was falling from the sky was eating away at their flesh. The acid rain lasted a full month, and with it the birds would never be seen again, the oceans turned to boiling cauldrons of pink sea foam and rot, and the sickness spread on the winds from the carcass of the combined children of the sea carried away most of the humans who had managed to survive the acid rain.
In the end it was not the strong, the fighters, the great among humanity who carried their species flag into the next world. It was the weak, the sick and the scared huddling in sewers and caves who inherited the future.

As the sun faded into a distant memory and the Ashen Curtain pervaded for years and then decades the very composition of the planet changed. Where once soft ground and plant life reigned supreme over the ecosystem, the deserts stretched outwards from their borders and engulfed everything in sight, turning the surface to sand and death. The only rain that falls here does so sparingly, and what pours down is acidic to the touch and all too fatal over extended periods of time. There is still water, buried deep beneath the sands and the earth and ruins of the old world below that, and insects alongside reptiles have managed to subsist off of these sources of liquid water alone, alongside those humans who still remain. In the darkness life has changed the underdwellers, their children, and their children now having grown to adulthood beneath the sands and without having ever seen the sun. Sickness is rampant, medicine is either non-existent or relegated to the Wizards and their noble patrons, and death is only a cut from a sharp rock or a broken ankle from a misstep away. Poverty and malnutrition is an even more crushing systemic issue, and with little to do to remedy it and less desire on the part of those who have their fair share to risk it by fighting on behalf of those below them there is little reason to think that anything is going to change anytime soon.

Deep below the surface, in the complex network of basements of the old world ruins and natural cavern complexes a civilization beneath the sands slowly dies in the Wastes. Karitos, or so the locals have seen fit to name it, was supposedly a beautiful place once, somewhere people from across the world came to see. A vast and beautiful network of caves lined with gorgeous forests and ample room for people to camp, hike, explore. In the modern day travelers who pass through one of the above ground entrances to Karitos have a thirty percent chance of dying within the week. There is no unified governing force here, and the citizens are factitious, paranoid and unlikely to trust one another let alone outsiders long enough or far enough to let them breathe the same air as themselves so long as it might take for the stranger to state their business. Still, travelers come to see Karitos, even after the world burned and the buildings above collapsed into the cave system.

Travel across the Wastes is dangerous, but does occur. There are several operating caravans in the sand, plying their wares and using mobile contraptions of bronze, iron and scavenged old world materials to transport goods and for protection from sandstorms and the rain while under the open sky. There are even two known societies who live primarily above ground, and who have begun the arduous practice of pushing back the sands and replacing them with potential food sources. The vast majority of the human population live a far less glamorous life, of course. Most have little in the way of skill or holdings, and primarily subsist by catching and eating insects and lizards, taking their skins to tailors and selling them for what little they can get and paying ten times the cost for a useful patch of reptilian leather in return. Perhaps so many as one in twenty people have an actual skilled trade, usually that of the smith or tailor, and the rest are comprised of the warriors.

Be they salaried Freehold guardians, hereditary slave holding overlords or mercenaries traversing the wastes in search of employment they practice a trade that has never quite lost its effectiveness. Population is good, and professionals are better, both being a part of this game, but at the end of the day if you can't keep what's your's and take from the next player you aren't going to go far in this world, and the primary focus of this game is going to be these warriors.

“Oh shit Liliya, I forgot I was reading an interest check! I was lost in your engrossing storytelling and the fate of these poor post-apocalyptic schmucks!” You’re too kind Miss/Mister Reader, but yes, this is an interest check for a game. @Doc Doctor and [@ELGainsboro] are partnering with me to create a persistent setting for some Arena Roleplay, which will have some Nation Roleplay elements and probably be something that is either super interesting to you or really totally not.

There are Advanced elements to the setting of this roleplay, but they are entirely relegated to the setting and overall lore of this particular universe. There is really only two or three paragraphs of information besides this interest check that would be required knowledge for any player, and I don't want any part of this story to get in the way of the players having a good time which, besides placating me and Doc's insatiable bloodlust, is really all that matters.

That being said I intend on putting out ten thousand or so words of lore separated into overviews of the different factions, superpowers, important characters, and the history of how this world came to be in the sorry state it has found itself, so if you as a player live for rich settings and plots of intrigue then you should be able to feel right at home here as well. Because I don't want to scare anyone off with complex maths (the horror!) and such the primary mechanics will be relegated to the background and mostly dealt with myself, and unless number crunching, variance and finding the most valuable combinations is really your thing then you probably won't ever need to see anything with numbers in it except this very specific point: this is a gang versus gang roleplay, there are superpowers who will occasionally offer work to one gang or another which may affect your income and the number of soldiers fighting alongside your gang, and if you want to take part in it you will need a small unit of characters to be able to fight and die taking and protecting important points along the complex underground network in Karitos.

These characters don’t need to be very well developed, and outside of your primary cast or even your leader figure they may well be virtually faceless NPCs if that’s how you prefer to roll, but I’m going to expect that you understand that because you are leading a unit of combatants that they will all have their needs and wants to take into consideration, will need to be fed, armed, armored, etc., and that your faction’s overall health and progress is being measured by the amount of control you can exert over a large amount of human beings and centers of production, you don’t need to see any of this if you don’t want and it won’t affect you or your faction’s ability to compete, but it is there in the background. Otherwise I strive for realism, the technology level in the city is around late medieval sans gunpowder weapons, and there is no such thing as magic or superpowers. The city of Karitos is supposed to be located in what used to be Mammoth Caves in Kentucky, and if playing humans who don’t have superpowers isn’t terribly interesting to you I don’t blame you, sword fighting in text format isn’t for everyone, but it’s what this game is basically all about.

The Only Stuff You Actually Need To Read In Order To Play This Game

The Rules are basically the standard Guild Rules. Be Cool Like The Fonz. This is an Arena Roleplay, but please don’t be scared away if you’re new to that format!! We are all totally willing to work with you towards having a competitive, enjoyable experience here. The setting is as easy or as complicated as you want it to be. The short description is that world ended, and it wasn’t pretty. This is a post-apocalyptic future setting where the sun was blocked out by the ash from a fire that burned all the trees on the planet. “Oh, that sounds dumb,” well yeah, but it sounded way better in the narrative description, this is just the short version. With no sun and no trees the grass and the wheat went away, and the cows and food animals went away with the grass.

The scientists of the world tried to remedy the situation by launching chemicals at the worldwide ash cloud called the Ashen Curtain. Most of the people who weren’t dead already put on masks for the smoke and went out to watch the world get saved. The chemicals turned the ash into acid rain that fell across the world for a month straight, killing basically all humans, all the birds and turned the oceans into boiling pits of death.

The only humans that survived did so underground, surviving off of lizards and insects and drinking from natural underground springs and aquifers. Fast forward a hundred years and you are the descendant of one of these people who survived the doom, and are now the leader of a gang of armed thugs who are either an elected peace keeping force of your district of Karitos, the underground city that you are living in which is separated along ten or so gang’s territories, or an unelected force that has basically forced the people who live in your territory to pay you taxes. There is no official government in Karitos, and you alongside the other players are the closest that the city has to a governing force. You are also wildly untrusting of the other gangs and do battle with them in the basements and natural caves that make up your city and territory over resources, population groups to either, “liberate,” or “conquer,” both of which in this case are almost exactly the same thing, and to keep your taxpayers quiet. Speaking of which, please tell me whether you prefer to liberate or conquer in the Extras section at the bottom of your sheet when you post it!

The actual game is mostly an Arena roleplay. The judges, if needed, will be me, Doc, EL, and if all three of us are involved in the same battle a random person from the Arena community with experience in judging fights. There are some Nation Roleplay elements in the game but it’s behind the scenes, and the only thing you are required to do is accept that you are leading a gang and that they as well as the people under you are required to be able to eat and stuff and note that there is some number stuff going on behind the scenes. If you actually like numbers then you’re welcome to look at the behind the scenes stuff and figure out which important location is paying more than others and try and conquer more of those points of interest or defend them with more resources than you would have used otherwise, whatever.

I mostly will just tell you this information when you get invaded or are mounting an invasion, so really that’s just if it’s something that your into. This game is all about having fun and spilling lots of blood. Your major gang players are unlikely to die, but the soldiers you send into battle and reprise in the actual posts are extremely likely to die and just be dead, so make sure you’re prepared for that. This is a real world variant and there is no magic, guns either don’t exist or are held by people who aren’t you, and most people fight with bladed weapons made of bronze and wear plates of metal sewn to snakeskin undercoats. I’ll put out a list of common arms and armor types for your convenience, but really unless you show up with a titanium katana I’m not gonna say much about any of it. And yes, that is my way of saying please don’t show up with gunpowder weapons or titanium or katanas. There isn’t a smith alive capable of making a katana, you’re mostly relying on people casting sharp stabbing blades and, if you’re wealthy, polearms. Ranged weapons exist, but aren’t terribly useful underground, and Karitos is entirely underground, so I wouldn’t advise them.

There will be a map, it will be split into ten or so areas, and those areas may connect with one another through tunnels and natural caves which are going to be the primary points of contention. The districts are what your gang is controlling at the beginning, are where they live and most likely were born, and will offer various useful behind the scenes number advantages, but are otherwise completely up to you. What are the people like? Do they like your gang? It’s your show, have fun. Their mood may change if you become unable to feed them at some point, of course, but everyone is starting out as being stable and capable of feeding/clothing/etc. everyone in their district for now, to keep from having any silly issues popping up at the beginning.

The map will be available if this gets past the interest check. Until then the last important bits are that there are two superpowers outside of Karitos, The Empire of the Crimson Throne and the Children of Aberforth, who will be offering the different gangs work and resources in return for various political advantages which could swing the balance of power in or out of your favor. The districts all meet in a central cavern which has access to a natural spring, called the Heart of the Mountain.

No gang owns this, and no weapons are allowed to be carried within, and anyone who enters this place carrying a weapon will have an instant enemy in the other nine gangs stationed there, but if there is a win condition in this game it’s getting strong enough to hold the Heart of the Mountain. This is well into the game however. There will be mercenaries that can be hired, probably reprised by myself, who will show up and fight for you for a certain duration and for access to certain resources, with varying effectiveness, they will have sheets just like the other gangs and will be hirable with the same resources that I’m keeping track of in the maths and stuff section. As always, I want you to have fun as players, so comments/questions/concerns are always welcome, and I’d love to see this be a fun community collaborative thing that we can enjoy together.

Additional Fluff

It's basically October, right? And so Karitos has entered it's Season of Dying, and the myriad rituals and traditions which surround the season have begun. The Elders, Cults and Wizards are burning ceremonial bonfires and spreading the ashes upon the holiday masks and costumes worn by the locals to stave off the Outsiders, dark denizens who poison water sources and hide your missing shoes that may or may not exist, but are mostly used as a tool to scare the masses either way. Feel free to join in with the rest of Karitos and celebrate the end of Summer, and the beginning of Autumn with your characters as well as the players in the OOC section whenever that goes up. We're working on some kind of reward that is fulfilling for roleplaying the season out well and working it into your characters without it actually affecting the IC or your chances at victory in the game, probably something art related, so we'll keep you posted on the particulars. In the meantime here's some fluff (oh no! more fluff!?!?) to keep you distracted or help you sleep in the meantime.

Eadweard of House Rodgar

Drip. Even in those most hallowed of moments the cave sounds refused to give way to silence. It was rare that even a fleeting moment passed in Karitos when nothing at all was stirring, buzzing, pounding. Here there was no night and no day, no busy times of industrious working and no peaceful times of quiet and sleep. It had only been three weeks, but already the darkness had stripped away those animal notions of the passing of time, all it gave in return being the dark, and the maddening drip of the walls crying over this great hall of the dead. All that remained of the before time was the remembrance of why he had come to this moratorium in the first place. The seasons had for the most part burned away along with the rest of the Old World, but there were subtle changes in temperature and patterns of rainfall that could be recorded even with the Ashen Curtain hiding the sun and stars the elders claimed lay above them in the heavens, and they were still recorded each in their time. This was the season of dying. The old world would have been harvesting their crops and preparing for the season of the dead in this time, warding the Outsiders from their homes as best they could with ghoulish visages of monsters and apparitions plastered to their persons and bedecking their halls. Would he survive the Dying Season to see another Season of Birth? Had his decision to seek out this great cairn doomed him to join its spirits in the other place? He couldn’t say. Warriors, thugs and mercenaries had gathered alongside the smiths, the tailors and the common rabble in the Heart of the Mountain as the wizard, young and female which in addition to the ritual across class lines came as a shock to the man whose birth in the Freehold of Liz’Baton reminded him that back home such a sight would have surely sent the Freehold Elders to riot, continued in the arduous practice of burning collected heaps of human waste to ashes before spreading the ashes over the masks, trinkets and bodies of the assembled.

Eadweard knew of the wizards and their prominence in the Southern Freeholds, he had met several and even received minor medical treatment from one in Rough Falls Farm while under contract to their Gentleman, though he had never much liked them. Back home it was the Shepard who would have been preforming the ritual for the members of the warrior class, the most prominent White Hair of the Liz’Baton Noble families, and he wondered if this woman no older than he was could command the same powers to ward against the Outsiders as any of the White Hairs of his people. It didn’t seem likely, but it stood to reason that if they had been students of the Great Wizard who had reintroduced metallurgy and discovered the Bull Who Lived they might just have some secret power his people weren’t informed of. The Empire of the Crimson Throne had pushed all the way up to Liz’Baton during the reign of The First Bull, and it had only been because of the White Hair’s ploy to send their own people to join the ranks of the Empire in the guise of escaped slaves and common laborers to learn of their magic, or at least their ability to combine copper and tin into shaped bronze, that they had been able to defend the Castle and push back the invading force, ending the first Crusade and maintaining the Freehold’s independence. He had been told that this wizard was the youngest of Aberforth’s proper pupils, and that she had only arrived in Karitos a few days before he had. Whether she was here to gather information on the city for the Empire or because her loyalties between Aberforth and the Empire were too questionable to keep her in the capital but not so questionable as to rid themselves of her permanently he couldn’t say, but everyone seemed to have an opinion. She would be invaluable to him and his ilk, of course. No doubt half of the mercenaries in Karitos today had come because of what her arrival to the town meant for its future prospects. If she was here it meant that Karitos held something valuable to the Empire.

A place like this, rife with competing factions and nothing even remotely resembling a government would make an appetizing prize for the Empire assuming they thought they could take it without a fight. Or, a fight waged by their armies anyway. They would pour resources into the gangs who, left with more fights to wage then they had warriors to fight them, would be hiring mercenaries in record number. This was made all the easier and all the more profitable with the arrival of the wizard. Officially their lot did not take sides or hold political beliefs, of course that had been drawn into serious question when their leader walked off into the Wastes and started a rebellion against the Empire, but what this had meant for mercenaries from just South of here to the Noosh’Val lands and beyond was that a single person could travel freely across borders and collect ledgers of information while being required to give that information to each competing side. This was not always a welcome proposition for the factions involved, and many refused the wizards though doing as such also meant their skills and magic would not normally be available to you and would be available to your enemies, but this was universally valuable to mercenaries. They simply had to give their name, equipment, place of birth and experience, usually recorded in left ears, to the wizard and they would mention them to the faction leaders across the Wastes. Show up with the marked patches of snakeskin and speak the word received with your bill of hire at the location specified and you had a job. Sure beat hanging around Gilly Tables waiting for someone to line the assorted mercs up against the wall, measure you up and pick the ones they wanted before sending the rest of you back to the tables. The wizard had finished her ritual and approached him, a pinch of the ashes from the censer in her right hand. He knelt, got on one knee and looked down while offering his right hand palm up and the rabbit mask he held in it towards her. He hoped that Providence forgave him for accepting her magic.

Let's start a riot... or a fight...or a skirmish...or a war...

I'll write it up tonight, send you and EL the interest check and post it as soon as you both sign off on it. As of right now I'm assuming that I have your permission to use the Empire of the Crimson Throne and EL's permission to use a modified version of his Children of Archimenon as the two major superpowers trying to gain influence over the individual gangs in the city, with those being played by the rest of the players. Is this going to be in arena or in casual? It could even go in Nation, but that's a bit more of a stretch. And if we're going through with having this being a gang vs gang thing with two superpowers (those being the Empire and the Children) it could easily turn into a lasting series of arena battles, some of which would be stacked against different sides for political reasons. If one gang cuts a deal to give the Empire a foothold in their territory in return for some military assistance against another gang the other side would be at an automatic numerical disadvantage, so the question is how realistic do you want this to be? If it's a normal arena game with a plot surrounding it, then I'll just toss all that stuff out and run it like a tournament. If the realism adds something desirable to the game then I'll put in some basic mechanics to keep people aware of the potential political plays they or their competition might be able to take advantage of. Anyone who has any suggestions/desires/questions please feel free to leave them here or message me.

Let's start a riot... or a fight...or a skirmish...or a war...

I agree, but I think there is already a bit of a baseline. Unless we change things pretty drastically Kull (Doc's Character) already uses plate mail, cast out of bronze for some reason, but it's effectively plate mail. He is, however, the captain of the Empire's household guard, so that doesn't mean that this is commonly available gear. In the setting I proposed most plant life is pretty much destroyed, so if we're going with that wood would be an extreme rarity, but again would be available to anyone who has significant funds. Bone, leather and metal are commonly available and metal shards would be the likely currency in this setting, so my estimate is that the technology exists for late medieval arms and armor sans gunpowder weapons as I can't see how they're synthesizing the powder without advanced chemistry equipment or a natural source of saltpeter, but its kind of a meta agreement (assuming that's good with the involved parties) that metal is still very expensive and unless you feel that your character could rationally afford something you shouldn't have it. I'd advise that the baseline start with most any professional warrior being able to afford laminar of varying qualities as leather would still exist for the padding and the plates can be sewn on as you can afford them. Some of the plates would be bone in the beginning, others bronze or iron, and you'd essentially be wearing your wealth on your body, which I like for a kind of post-apocalyptic hedge knight feel, with more noble types having access to chain, brigandine, plate, etc. Thrusting short swords and daggers alongside axes and other cleaving weapons, to include poleweapons if you could afford them would likely be common, as ranged weapons lose a lot of their intrinsic value underground. The sky would be the limit from there, all depending on how wealthy you feel like your gang is.

Let's start a riot... or a fight...or a skirmish...or a war...

Well, the gist is that I basically proposed post-apocalyptic Hive City except underground and during a period of perpetual global twilight spawned by said apocalypse. The most valuable thing in the world right now is old world knowledge, from before the apocalypse I mean, and the two local superpowers are the Empire of the Crimson Throne and the Children of Aberforth (or whatever, just a post apocalyptic version of your Children of Archimenon). The two are fighting over a museum that survived the chaos by falling into a natural cavern complex, only problem is the caverns are held by gangs that are locked in perpetual war over the scarce underground resources, and without clearing them out the superpowers can't risk mounting an invasion on the city for fear of unifying the gangs against themselves and, even worse, possibly in favor of the other side. So the gangs occasionally cut deals with the superpowers in return for the resources needed to carve out their territories in the underground, but won't agree to any permanent alliance with either side because the offer from across the table gets better the higher their price from the former was, a system that is only sustainable because of the extreme value represented by the museum. I'll start on some sheets in case this does become a gang vs. gang type of thing, but I could also do a generic gladiatorial type of deal with one character. Medieval melee with no magic seems to be the direction we're leaning, so I'll build my character/gang that way.

Let's start a riot... or a fight...or a skirmish...or a war...

Is the Crimson Throne from an established cannon somewhere, Doc? I read through your sheet and didn't notice anything that confirmed that he couldn't exist in a generic post-apocalyptic setting. How about confirming a few of the basic tags/requests/interests? Even if the Crimson Throne exists in a different multiverse and some of the details have to be fudged the Crimson Throne in and of itself is a useful actor for this purpose. Kull himself may be a, "nice guy," but empires don't arise from the actions of good people, at some point the Empress/Emperor actually conquered at least one other society to gain the title, or so I assume. This creates the plot need for those who are actively opposed to the Crimson Throne's rule, if only because they want a bigger slice of the pie over their own territories for themselves. There's always the angle of the popular revolution, though given the request of, "apocalyptic underground society controlled by rival gangs struggling for control over a specific sector," I would propose instead that what is going on is that a singular primary opponent, either a populist movement headed by a charismatic leader or a single faction larger than the individual gangs one on one but significantly weaker than the gangs as a whole (some 60/40 or even 70/30 split would be fairly realistic) who are dependent on the separate gangs to not turn on them en masse but to whom these individuals aren't exactly, "friends," nor desired in the long term. This would allow for these individual gangs to both be able to fight with one another over territory, and to have two separate, "superpowers," fighting over general control of the city/territory to occasionally cut deals with in return for resources.

I would propose that the surface world is covered in a permanent ash that has essentially obviated farming as a practical food generator, and what has taken over in its stead is a heavy dependence on less light intensive plants, fungi and night blooming plants, and the shepherding of animals who can subsist off of these plants, with water being the most singularly important resource any town can possess followed by access to a workable metal for tools/weapons and the tech needed to accomplish this. Most people live as slaves scattered in small groups across the wastelands and ruled/owned by various competing warlords who are locked in a constant struggle between the established superpowers in the region, most notably the Empire of the Crimson Throne whose high towers and walls of stone have been built up and around the remains of an ancient city of glass and steel (Doc’s choice as to the real world location), and the Children of Aberforth, Archibald (or Archimenon, whatever) the former Court Wizard of the Crimson Throne. That isn’t to say that magic is real in this setting, the wizard may well be a delver of the old places who gained knowledge that permitted him to teach the Crimson Throne building techniques, weapons manufacturing, etc., that permitted their empire to rise above the slaver collectives and attain their lofty heights until he decided that they hadn’t done enough to stem the injustices in the world that led him to teach them these old world secrets in the first place and left to form his own faction opposed both to the slavers and the Throne.

From this point we enter the city of Karitos, nestled in a patch of mountains pocked and cratered in the aftereffects of whatever tragedy befell the old world and borne the new, consisting of old sewer tunnels, a complex series of half-collapsed basements and natural mountain caves more labyrinth than traditional city. There is no such thing as a grid layout here, and it could take you so long to get to the physically closest living space from where you are as it would to cross the underground city depending on the environmental factors and local degree of collapse. Natural water is easily accessible from all of the districts in the city, and the heart of the town for which the city is named is a natural cave with free flowing ground water by the name of Karitos (or Heart) of the Mountain. To control this point would automatically make you the ruler of the entire town, for though other districts have some amount of water themselves there is no other point from which the entirety of the population of Karitos could possibly sustain themselves. No wonder it’s also the most heavily contested and watched over point by the various gangs and factions operating in the area. The common convention accepted by the people of Karitos is that the districts, each ruled over by one or more gangs local to them, have equal access to Karitos and that no weapons are permitted inside, with all factions keeping a permanent guard and defensible position from their individual entrances pointed towards the heart as both a forward strike base and in case of any funny business on the part of the other gangs into Karitos.

What makes the city itself distinct from both the slaver gangs and the freeholds of the wastes and makes its people of specific interest to the Crimson Throne and the Children of Aberforth is that they rest atop a bastion of ancient writings and knowledge that is kept bared from the population by only a few meters of debris. The problem for all sides is that this bastion is located in the remains of the super structure constructed directly above Karitos in the old world. A museum in relatively good condition owing to its collapse into the earth before the worst of the damage to the surface world came to pass, whose knowledge of the old world and its technologies could shape the next century of human development, and hand the keys to control over the wastes to a single faction or individual, and though it would be beyond any side’s abilities to dig down hundreds of meters to get into it from above any side with a solid dominion over the city of Karitos could tunnel up into it in a matter of days.

This city-wide dominance is something that no side has been able to accomplish as of yet. The Superpowers have refrained from storming Karitos directly in an attempt to keep from unifying the population into a single fighting force, and one that would potentially ally with the other side indefinitely should they be faced with an outright invasion by one or the other, and neither side have so much as a definitive foothold in Karitos proper. The local gangs are consistently untrustworthy over long stretches of time, and are more likely to cut temporary deals with one side or the other for their resources before shirking back to neutrality, as likely to cut the next deal with the other side as the former. There are a handful of gangs who have only ever been neutral or temporarily aligned with one side, but these represent about thirty percent of the population split roughly even between the Crimson Throne and the Children of Aberforth, and are by no means to be considered legitimate loyal soldiers. That isn’t to say violence isn’t an everyday, commonplace event in Karitos. They’ve even managed to make a spectacle out of the event. The one and only situation where weapons are permitted in the Heart of the Mountain is when two factions have a disagreement and challenge the other to a duel before the eyes of the townspeople. The only place that can be witnessed by the entirety of the town is, of course, the center of the tunnels and sewer networks. Roughly circular and approximately thirty three yards in diameter, the factions gather to witness the spilling of blood in the Heart, and once a duel has been issued and accepted there is no end but on that hallowed ground.

Beyond the duels in the Heart the factions, though they all meet in the Heart, are still interconnected in other locations along the complex underground systems. None of the factions hold territory that is completely inaccessible from a location held by another gang, and in these contested hallways and open caverns and basements battle rages near constantly in an effort to gain more influence, more territory, and more control over the next group. The fighting is fierce, and often moves inch by inch with projectiles lobbed at the opposing side’s palisades or shield walls until both sides reach a breaking point and charge one another with bronze dirk and iron battleaxe at distances of a mere handful of yards. Each gang controls several important locations noted for their production capabilities, food or water harvesting, or natural resource reserves, and the blood spilled by their soldiers is always considered to be worth the price when taking or defending these priceless resource generators.

I think this would be a useful starting point for further discussion, but of course take or leave as much of it as you both want. It simply accomplishes the goals of having the potential for two superpowers warring over a conflict zone, underground gangs fighting over smaller points of interest, an arena that has plot background for being used to generically spill blood, plus it could easily transition into a Nation Roleplay. That would either be accomplished by players reprising the as of now faceless, “gangs,” of Karitos or even as totally independent freeholds or slaver gangs in the Wastes who are trying to compete with the superpowers and each other for dominance over the wastes. It can also be filled in with setting details that would allow it to fit the category of Post-Apocalyptic, Future, Medieval, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Military, or whatever really, and so few as two or as many as might join could realistically take part in the setting in one form or another. If you do want to try it out as a 2v2 or something in this setting (modified, not modified, or even scrapped entirely) I would be happy to write up a character for the fight, either with you versus Doc and his second, or with Doc versus you and your's.

Important Information ~ WIP

Setting Specifics

Technology

The State of the World

Factions

Super Powers of the Wastes

The Empire of the Crimson Throne:

The Children of Aberforth:

Gangs of Karitos

Slaver Gangs

Freeholds

Persons of Note

PCs

NPCs

Anyone up for a free roam sci fi space survival?

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EDIT: So is this based on an existing setting? Don't see where Qari, or Azaal as species are explained, and if they mean anything it's lost on me.

G UNIT - (Liliya Vs. Doc)

Jimmy let out a loud yawn as most of the crowd, at first attracted to their presence by the promise of what might have been a mildly entertaining distraction from the day's long hours of mock combat in the form of a rap battle on some guy's front lawn, made for the most part one of three equally embarrassing decisions. In light of the blatant display of magic on the part of the cracker in white many just pissed themselves and started running in terror, other, braver sorts were now pulling out their phones and recording the magic show without a f@#$ given towards the rap that made up the substance of the dispute, and several were now staring dumbfounded at what they had just witnessed clearly without enough wherewithal to make any sort of decision as to their next move. Mac for one looked like the only thing keeping him from running along with many of the others was the sheer amount of concentration he was expending simply to keep from fainting on the spot, a mental back and forth visible in his eyes between the competing forces of rationalization of what he had just witnessed and the underlying, lizard-brain horror of what it might mean that this random guy might actually have the power to command little people to appear out of thin air, and the fears of what that would actually mean in the grand scheme of things as well as for his immediate chances of walking out of this encounter in one piece and without developing severe traumatic psychological damage. Perhaps the guy with the fake grill and an apparent lack of interest in his opponent’s ability to conjure TV personalities into being out of thin air had seen similar displays of magical prowess before, though that would have seemed rather unlikely given he had been chance met at a live action roleplaying event primarily aimed towards young adults who fantasized magic rather than understood the actual dangers represented by individuals who could bend the nature of reality with their minds. Perhaps he was just insane, or convinced that it had been an elaborate display of common smoke and mirror street magic.

Either way, it didn’t stop him from busting into his routine the second the beat dropped. Sixteen seconds into the track and he was as ready as he was ever going to be, taking one last deep breath a moment before jumping to attention and taking a long step forward with his right foot. “Oohh, look out y’all, we got a Bad-Ass Over Here," seventeen seconds and change, and Jimmy threw his hands up in the air, turning his feet around in a circle as though to elicit a response from the remaining audience members. He knew that the kind of pace Kentucky here had belted during that last bit wasn't something most people were going to beat, but just because his opponent was fast didn't mean Jimmy wasn't gonna try and out-do his bitch ass. "With just two words he made his favorite Lad-Lass Appear," nineteen seconds in, and Jimmy was looking Wee Man square in the eye while making thrusting motions with his hips in his direction, in a mock imitation of what he figured Kentucky's main purpose in summoning him from out of nowhere must be on a regular basis. If this whole thing turned into an actual brawl, he already knew that he was gonna take him and use him as a human club to beat this magic slinging dirtbag. "Bet that’s real useful for You, really gets you Going, Need him bothering your Boo, to get her juices Flowing," he had picked up the pace now, double time, and twenty seconds and change into the track his mind was made up to belt this out as quickly as he possibly could, regardless of the consequences for the rest of the exchange. He had plenty to say, little time to say it, and he knew it. "We all know your auntie-sister-cousin really don’t like Him, But you need him sneakin’ ‘round to keep things the way she likes it, Grim," twenty two seconds and he picked up the pace further, half of the words leaving his mouth barely enunciated, but the crowd would have caught the gist and Kentucky, who was being faced and rapped at directly, would likely catch every word.

"What’s next? Gonna summon some seven foot Amazonian to help you Out? Thought my Lannister thing was over, why you just gonna go and reinforce It? Spitting my own accolades, spinning my own web, more interesting tales I’d Spout, But some Southern slaver using magic to control little people just made this Bit," twenty four seconds, he'd have to do better if he was going to finish in time. His left arm outstretched palm up as though he was holding something, Jimmy then tucked this invisible object to his chest and began rubbing at it with his right hand, presumably an imagined lamp given the context. “Master Kentucky Fried Cracker, I bestow upon thee three Wishes. Whatever thy desire shall be granted Thee. For I am a great and powerful Genie, whose might and grandeur could make you a King,” twenty seven seconds, and he had taken a step to the side with his hands at his hips, before taking a step and turning about face, reprising his second character, clearly meant to be Kentucky. “Why Genie, I wish for the ability to summon little men by spoken command so as to make them my Bitches, To posess the ivory raiment of Colonel Kay Ef Cracker so that I might be the most finely bedecked at afternoon Tea, And for the great feat of commanding hundreds of words a minute with which at my many small bitches I shall Fling, Orders, expand my family’s Borders, None of that matters much to me, but ‘till the wars are Won my auntie-sister-cousin girlie has me by the Pe, --,” Jimmy grabbed at his crotch to emphasize the point, though he didn’t break his concentration nor his barrage of half-enunciated words. “Mad about it so I pick on Nerds,” he made a fist and hit an imagined passerby, nearly actually hitting Mac, though whether or not that was intentional given his lack of situational awareness in his hyper focused state was impossible to say. “Sad the fighting’ shedding lighting on her loyalties fickle as Birds,” he flapped his arms before making a grapping motion with both hands. “Catch her with the guy from the supermarket fish section Again?”

“Batch of fresh new worries got you thinking ‘bout some other guy who could buy her Champaign?” he poured from an imagined bottle into a stemmed glass before moving his hand as though tipping it in Kentucky’s direction. “Difference between you and me is I ain’t worried ‘bout tryin ‘a hook up with my Family, Vociference of personality and character when I throw down don’t do so Clamily,” he pointed a thumb directly to his chest with his right hand, never missing a beat. “All that propels me, drives me, fuels Me, Brawl all day see, it’d be, best to Flee, While you still can ‘fore those sad rhymes of your's elicit Boos, I’ll gladly take a hand from you and our lovely audience in addition to your Shoes," Jimmy pointed first to his right hand with his left before making a slashing motion at it with an imagined axe or blade, and then bowed low to what was left of the audience, at least half of the reason for the low bow being that he could hide his face long enough to take several brittle, gasping attempts at getting oxygen back into his blood stream. He felt like he was going to pass out, and he knew he’d have to do this all over again in a minute, but if he could help it he sure as shit wasn’t gonna let the audience or Kentucky see him squirm. Best case scenario he got his point across to Kenzie, whose boots he could see some ten feet behind him out of the corner of his eye with his head and back bent so low, and he might elicit some applause from the crowd mostly spawned by her egging them on to it. He knew most of them weren’t actually listening to a word either of them were saying or he would have won after this, instead more preoccupied with Wee Man’s sudden appearance at the magical behest of his opponent, but there was still a chance his far superior burnage might elicit some favor from the masses. Who knows, maybe his opponent would take something personally, throw his shoes off and stomp back into his house.

----------------------------------------------------------------

“Oohh, look out y’all, we got a Bad-Ass Over Here,"
With just two words he made his favorite Lad-Lass Appear,
Bet that’s real useful for You, really gets you Going,
Need him bothering your Boo, to get her juices Flowing,
We all know your auntie-sister-cousin really don’t like Him,
But you need him sneakin’ ‘round to keep things the way she likes it, Grim,

What’s next? Gonna summon some seven foot Amazonian to help you Out?
Thought my Lannister thing was over, why you just gonna go and reinforce It?
Spitting my own accolades, spinning my own web, more interesting tales I’d Spout,
But some Southern slaver using magic to control little people just made this Bit,

Master Kentucky Fried Cracker, I bestow upon thee three Wishes.
Whatever thy desire shall be granted Thee.
For I am a great and powerful Genie, whose might and grandeur could make you a King,
Why Genie, I wish for the ability to summon little men by spoken command so as to make them my Bitches,
To posess the ivory raiment of Colonel Kay Ef Cracker so that I might be the most finely bedecked at afternoon Tea,
And for the great feat of commanding hundreds of words a minute with which at my many small bitches I shall Fling,

Orders, expand my family’s Borders, None of that matters much to me, but ‘till the wars are Won my auntie-sister-cousin girlie has me by the Pe, --, Mad about it so I pick on Nerds, Sad the fighting’ shedding lighting on her loyalties fickle as Birds, Catch her with the guy from the supermarket fish section Again? Batch of fresh new worries got you thinking ‘bout some other guy who could buy her Champaign? Difference between you and me is I ain’t worried ‘bout tryin ‘a hook up with my Family, Vociference of personality and character when I throw down don’t do so Clamily, All that propels me, drives me, fuels Me, Brawl all day see, it’d be, best to Flee, While you still can ‘fore those sad rhymes of your's elicit Boos, I’ll gladly take a hand from you and our lovely audience in addition to your Shoes,"

Rap Battles

"It seems the more I try to connect with the world,
I am feeling more alone than I ever have felt before,"