Oddsbod

End + Sleep

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I N T R O D U C T I O N

Hey all, thanks for coming by! Welcome to the End of Sleep, a high fantasy adventure RPG set in the cursed land of Invernier. Think of it as a dark setting and a dark story, as written by an optimist. Happy ending possibly included.

Players will start off in the hamlet of Alonso, and by random circumstance find themselves forced together on a journey to discover whether or not their sick and weakened world can be saved. I know there’s a lot of world-building info involved here, so if you have any questions at all, no matter how small, feel free to post them in the OOC thread, or, if you prefer, shoot me a PM.

The actual RPG itself will start as rumors begin circulating that magicians in our region of the world are being conscripted into the newly ascendant People’s Legion, which has taken over management of the lands of the Tempesta. From there, thing start to go off the rails.

R U L E S

❖ Have fun. First and most important thing. Above all else, we’re here because we love storytelling. As Ogobrogo put it, “There is no winning. There is no losing. There's not going to be some phat piece of loot waiting at the end, and you're not going to see some game over screen. So just enjoy the journey.” As Surtr put it, “Don’t be a dick.”

❖ Standard role-playing guidelines apply. No godmodding, no controlling other people’s characters without their permission, the usual good stuff that comes with respecting your fellow players’ writing and characters.

❖ Don’t post character sheets in the character thread unless I’ve approved them. If you have a draft you’d like to post for review, put it up in OOC or message it to me privately.

❖ I can be a bit anal while critiquing sheets. Don’t worry about it, it’s nothing personal and it’s not at all your character in particular, I just like to give detailed thoughts on these kinds of things.

❖ That said… I’m always open to discussion on posts and characters, but if I put my foot down on something, I ask you respect that, and make any necessary changes that are required of whatever post or character is being discussed.

❖ Posting I am expecting players to post at least once a week, but I know life happens, and when it does it’s usually more important than an online play-by-post RPG. If something’s come up, let me know over PM or in the OOC thread.

❖ Absences/Dropping. Likewise, I totally understand if you’ve lost interest, need a break, or just can’t keep up with the RP anymore. Completely fine, no hard feelings, I just ask you let me know so I know whether to drop or wait for you. If you go two or more weeks without a word, you will be treated as dropped.

❖ Posting. I’ve never been very strict with post length. I’d prefer a single good paragraph to a page of filler. That said, please avoid one-liners or low effort posts. Make sure you respond fairly to what’s happened with other characters, and give other people something to bounce off of.

❖ The OOC thread. Post here literally whenever you want, about even the most tangentially related stuff. It really helps to keep this section active, so don’t sweat about anything from questions to even mildly fantasy-related chit-chat.

End + Sleep: A High Fantasy Adventure in Cursed Land

@Oddsbod Is it already too late to express interest here then? Had to quickly make an account just for this. :'(

@Cherry Blossom

Lol nope, not too late, you're in. I think I might've mentioned this before but I am very, very soft, and am absolutely over the moon any time anyone shows interest in my work.

(That said, I will probably close the RPG as soon as the OOC goes up, which should be within the hour.)

End + Sleep: A High Fantasy Adventure in Cursed Land

@Oddsbod now that this has gotten so much interest, I was wondering how many characters you wanted to have for this rp?

@CrimsonAmaranth

I'm probably going to cap it at whoever posted here in the interest check. Luckily, the RPG's story is set up in a way it can manage a very large cast, but I'm probably not going to be letting any more people in.

This looks amazing ^.^
I'll wait for the highly anticipated OOC and see if I can come up with something that fits with the story and cast.

@dreamingflowers

Sounds good! Can't wait to see!

End + Sleep: A High Fantasy Adventure in Cursed Land

I'm sorry I haven't replied to any of several PMs yet, or some things that've come up in the interest check thread. I've been hammering away at the OOC post all day and it's finally, finally nearly done! The only part I have to finish is the magic section, which is quite literally oly missing two more segments, which I can finish in another half-hour. Unfortunately, I need to go to bed soon, but I will be finishing this up first thing in the morning, so give me about 8 hours.

I will get back to all of you kind folks when the post is finally up, very soon. Thanks again for your patience!

I'm gonna stick to a musical character. The song magics described in the OP seem to fit the bill just well-the heal song sounds useful as well.

@vietmyke

Well ur in luck bud, I just finished the OOC version of the Concordance section about thirty minutes ago, here ya are. A lot of it deals with history too, since several songs recount important events that occurred during the lifetime of Queen Julieta, and had significance that would linger down for centuries afterwards. So having a historical angle in addition to the bard angle could also work with your character, if that's what you prefer.

OH, also! I've changed the magic rules, so that now the magic sections will only have a list of sample spells, and you guys are free to invent whatever new spells you want based the kinds of things seen in the examples.

My Hider

C O N C O R D A N C E

Julieta’s Voice

Concordance is one of the few magical styles with a distinct and well-recorded history, invented early in the Age of the Queens by Julieta Sinqueleur, youngest of the legendary Nine Sisters. Julieta based the art of Concordance entirely on song and melody, and certain members of her procession learned to imitate the Queen’s enchanted voice. They say that over the course of her short life, Julieta wrote hundreds of tunes, each with a unique power.

The magic of Concordance is highly varied, but includes no cruel or unkind magic, as fitting for a person of Julieta’s nature. She saw laughter, happiness, and sad, subtle love as the greatest powers humankind would ever know, and her songs all reflect this.

Sample Spells:

Concordance Spell List

❖ Ballad in the Mist ❖

Simple
A low and long ballad whose lyrics can be indistinguishable from the wind. This song raises a spectral mist to cover the magician and their allies, while mysteriously leaving their vision intact. A more powerful variant (Advanced) exists that is more magically imbued, and can even shield the magician and their allies from magical detection as well, and dampen enemy spells.

❖ Masmala ❖

Simple
A whispery and happy tune to be hummed under one’s breath. The song Masmala, based by Julieta on Majulin children’s lullabies, can carry hypnotizing effects capable of lulling enemies and wild animals into a sleepy stupor. This song was written while Julieta and Desdemona were still dear friends, when neither could imagine the bloodshed that would eventually erupt between them. There is a melancholy note to Masmala's upbeat melody, perhaps a development that arose after Julieta's death, something that lingers like an aging grandmother on happier, better times.

❖ Mending Melody ❖

Advanced
A quiet and hopeful tune that can heal minor flesh injuries and restore stamina.

❖ Hymn for the Lost ❖

Advanced
A gentle song of remembrance. As it is sung, the magician will glimpse flashes of the history of their current location, and the longer they sing, the further back they see and hear. Vision becomes blurry if you try to look back farther than a week.

❖ Shoshanna ❖

Mighty
A whispered song audible only to the singer. It casts the singer into shadow, hiding their body and muffling their footsteps. Of course, the invisibility only lasts to the end of the song, so once about three minutes have passed, one will pass back into visibility, even if only for a moment, unless the magician is particularly fast about restarting the song.

❖ Symbelmine ❖

Mighty
A high and powerful song of desire and sadness. Its power destroys rock and mortar and metal, and promises to the listener an end to all tyranny and injustice. Though few know how to pull magic from this powerful song, the lyrics of Symbelmine are well known in the east, as they chronicle Julieta leading the Undead from their prison in the Catechism to safety in the mysterious southeast.

End + Sleep: A High Fantasy Adventure in Cursed Land

Is there still room? I'm a sucker for GMs who are willing to break the molds of genre and tonal structure, and as long as we don't have to write in iambic pentameter, I like Shakespeare, too! (No room for Harry and Falstaff on this map, though? Tsk tsk.)

My question is: how strong are an ordinary, normal, non-magical dude's chances of surviving in this world, since I'm not really interested in playing a technowizard? Does everyone know magic or is it more esoteric and exclusive? Likewise for gunpowder technology; widespread or rare? The OP does address this, but in the comparative. It says this or that is "less common" than it was before, but that doesn't really say how shocked and wary our characters would be if we saw a wizard in our midst.

(Edit: I do have a backup plan if a run-of-the-mill sword-swinger isn't what you're looking for, anyway.)

@pugbutter

Magic is very uncommon in this day and age, and magician's are, almost always, treated with distrust (at best), so a non-magical dude's chances should be pretty good. It's a bit more common in the Tempesta, and people will generally be okay with a bit of it, and it's pretty common for a few people in each village or for random hermits to know one or two spells, but if you're enough of a magician to have the tell-tale eye mutations, you're gonna be in for a bad time.

Advanced technology, like electricity or guns, is also generally seen basically in the same light as magic by the average farmer, and is probably just as common. So, yeah, low-key characters are totally encouraged, and have just as good a chance of surviving as anyone else.
I'd mostly been gearing the old Army of Heroes/People's Legion characters to be the primary set up for characters anyways, so that'd be a fine fit. Hopefully the OOC will give a better picture of how things should feel.

This RPG will have fighting, but it's much more character focused than combat focused.

End + Sleep: A High Fantasy Adventure in Cursed Land

@FrozenEcstasy I may be understating the gradual nature of the lantern's effect. It's purely a drawback, meant to keep anyone that seeks its shelter from actually getting any rest. The average person will have a "Wow this sucks," reaction to it, and it takes a considerable amount of continuous exposure to have a profound effect. His lack of reaction to it (or perhaps being just so mad he's inundated to it) is meant to emphasize his detachment from humanity.

I'd personally choose the gun over the lantern if made to choose between the two. It represents him as a hunter foremost. Hunter of beasts, hunter of monsters, and if need be hunter of men. I'd say more than going it alone, his personality is better as sort of "live by the sword, die by the sword." Someone mentioned Dark Souls earlier in the thread, and I'm basically up front about my character being much more influenced by Bloodborne.

I'd like to bring up as well, since you sort of mentioned it, his "influence" on the setting. I'd almost intentionally make his influence practically negligible, to represent the futility of his struggle. Despite his fantastic tools and centuries of work, he's still only a single, lonesome man, and the world is no better for his efforts.

@Dead Cruiser

At the end of the day, this still raises an issue of the character having just one too many extremely extraordinary abilities and resources in an RPG where the characters were more expected to be a bit low-key, in the vein of Army of Heroes survivors, wandering pilgrims, People's Legion recruits, etc. Ageless, with metal organs and presumably more resilience than the average human, plus a hand cannon, plus a powerful lantern that wards off efertide while being compact enough for one person to carry, plus a maddening/agonizing effect to said lantern that the character wielding it is immune to, but that makes it basically impossible to use among allies.

I think, at this point, I'd prefer you cut the lantern entirely and, for the rest of it, I'd like to wait and post the full OOC first, which is much more thorough and clear about the setup of the RPG, along with the sample character, and then see what the first draft of this character's sheet looks like before drawing further judgment. Keeping in mind, again, that while the concept is interesting, an ageless super soldier is a very out-there and extraordinary set-up, and it'll take a very interesting character with lots of potential for fun and meaningful inter-character interaction for me to give this the okay.

End + Sleep: A High Fantasy Adventure in Cursed Land

<Snipped quote by Oddsbod>

I'd prefer generally to cut the candies in favor of the lantern and the cannon. I was planning for the lantern to have some considerable drawbacks, if that's relevant. Namely that it works by emitting a certain resonance that, while it succeeds at repelling the efertide, it's also incredibly disorienting and slowly drives normal people insane.

@Dead Cruiser

I think that raises another issue. While it sort of lowers the lantern's power level, it vastly increases the complexity of the character's set up and their ability to influence the world and plot through sheer abilities, rather than actions and choices. Someone who's an immortal remnant from a fallen empire, with access to advanced technology, who can also drive people insane is a lot to have for one character. Again, I would stick to either the lantern or the cannon, and of the two I think the lantern makes for a more interesting character, since it emphasizes his distance from the average townsperson, and his going-it-alone disposition (based on what you've told me of his personality).

_{i'm not outdated}

@Oxy

U bet ur butt it's happenin

End + Sleep: A High Fantasy Adventure in Cursed Land

If you're still accepting characters, I'd like to express interest.

I have sort of a weird character concept. An ancient hunter, made ageless by long-lost science and sorcery. Most of his memories are lost to the ages, but he still carries out his singular purpose, to protect humankind by exterminating monsters and the undead. Carries a hand-cannon, a relic lantern than works as a sort of mobile Bonfire, and strange little candies that can heal and purify the body.

What do you think?

@Dead Cruiser

Whoops, sorry, I missed this. I like the idea of an immortal soldier who's singlemindedly fallen into a 'kill monsters, protect the survivors, that's all I am and all I ever will be' sort of mindset, should be fun to force a knight templar-ish person like that right next to characters like magicians or eventual Undead NPCs. The Tempesta is right next door to the islands of the Vanities, which'd been a fucking ginormous and crazy powerful empire a few hundred years previous, so I could see that kind of character fitting in.

That said, being ageless via ancient magic and technology is a very Big Thing, and having a lantern to work as a mobile Bonfire is another Very Very Big Thing. Both of these make sense with the character, but I'd rather you cut the candies and the hand cannon to limit the amount of strange-and-special aspects to the character. Or, alternatively, cut the lantern, let him keep the cannon.

Also, that said, for everyone else, don't think your characters need to be soldiers, or fighters, or great and powerful champions. My character is literally just an archaeologist, for example. Having someone more low-key fits perfectly fine for the RPG, and frankly will be treated with significantly less scrutiny than the more powerful characters.

End + Sleep: A High Fantasy Adventure in Cursed Land

So, I know I said this twice before, but I actually am almost almost done. I'm finished with the location section, FINALLY, and the only things I have left are the character sheet skeleton and a handful of magic descriptions—tomorrow, for sure, the OOC will be going up. Get hype children.

(i'm so sorry about my inner nature as a garbage potato, for real this time, actually, RPG is going up tomorrow)

End + Sleep: A High Fantasy Adventure in Cursed Land

<Snipped quote by Oddsbod>

Imagine the old lady that nobody really likes but they keep her around because she saved your grandmother from the pox with some weird potion that made her turn a shade of blue for two days. She sorta rambles on about little things like how mushy her tomatoes were or how dreadfully loud the ghost-voices were last night when there was a murder in town. Unnerving, but charming and useful in a fashion that leaves them safe as long as they help out in a small community. Basically a hedgewitch, common for villages in the rough time period this roleplay is based off.

However, she'd be a rather effeminate young man instead, and ramble on more about how his cat Snuffles had the sneezes the night before last because he got sick defending the village from a strange plague-like monster. (As I am writing this our cat just sneezed and fell off the chair he was sitting on I am crying.)

Also, I'm basing this concept loosely on the insanity and ghostiness from Hamlet, my favorite Shakespearean play.

Edit:
*ahem* Also in reference to the cat I'll just make him a sort of combat familiar. Have a spell to make him grow a few sizes, couple it with a healing spell for the character himself to use, and a spell to temporarily animate anything without a lifeforce. Top it off at like three spells, maybe a fourth depending on the power level you'd ascribe.

@FrozenEcstasy

Crazy town hedge-witch sounds cool, I like it! Haha, and we're only a few miles south of the Hamlet themed region too, so that works out nicely. Since it can be drizzly and cold, having some simple spells for restoring energy and curing colds sounds perfectly fitting as well, and very useful.

This actually sets up some pretty neat stuff with the opening of the RPG, so I might PM you some stuff if you do decide the join in, and after your character's sheet is cleared.