Phantomlink959

The Bureau of Supernatural Affairs

@KatherinWinter
It takes prolonged physical contact to locate and extract the specific memory, longer for formulating replacements. The older and more important a memory is the longer it takes and the more difficult it is to extract. Core memories, the ones that like you said cause a life-long fear, can take hours to extract as a Djinn would need to search through their memory to find it, sever EVERY connection it has to other memories, and then reconnect the links between memories that removing it created.

During the period where a memory extraction and replacement is being performed, they must maintain their natural Djinn form (at least one full limb) which is highly conspicuous at best, especially since any clothes they are wearing in their human form are part of the shell and will dissapear along with the human limb while they are using their natural reptilian arm for the process.

To perform a proper memory extraction (which causes temporary paralysis) they must place their hand on a person's face, direct skin to skin contact. While they can extract memories with any direct contact, shaking hands would not cause the paralytic effect and they'd only have a couple seconds to work before the other person realizes they're shaking hands with a lizard wearing a human suit, meaning at best they could skim off the memories of the last few minutes.

If the process is interrupted before they fully extract a memory (even if they're only take a few more seconds), it will 'bounce back' into the owner, effectively reversing any changes made, so they'd have to start over to try and extract the same memory.

It is harder to extract the memories of more intelligent or strong willed people, or those with psychic powers, as they are naturally resistant to mental magic.

The Bureau of Supernatural Affairs

@KatherinWinter
That matches up with what I said. The latter would be true; you'd be afraid of dogs, but not remember why, and any memories of being afraid of dogs (even if you don't remember the cause) would be unaffected by removing the first memory in the chain.

Unless the event that caused the fear of dogs was VERY recent, removing it would have no effect on the overall fear because it has been reinforced over time by other memories in which you experienced the fear of dogs.

It's the not know why that's important in this case. Your personality would remain in tact, you won't remember the original source of personality traits but because the majority of your memory in which those traits were relevant remain in-tact loss of the source memory doesn't impact the trait. It's been reinforced over time by subsequent memories.

There's actually a semi-famous example of that which I can use. There was a man who had the temporal lobes in his brain removed because of severe epilepsy. He lost the ability to learn new things and form new memories, but his personality remained unchanged. In fact, he gave the exact same answer to any question no matter how many times he was asked.

On a more personal (and painful) example. A few years ago, my great grandfather died of Alzheimers disease. Over the course of nearly a decade his mind began to deteriorate and his memories slowly dissapeared. Throughout that time, though, even when he could barely remember his own name, his personality never changed. Not even a little bit. he was still the same stubborn old man that raised me.

EDIT: I keep forgetting to put a mention in. I'll work on that if you decide to let me join.

The Bureau of Supernatural Affairs

@KatherinWinter
It's hard to explain the mechanics of it, but for one thing erasing or altering a single memory doesn't actually impact a character's personality to any noticeable degree.

To truly change a person, you would need to remove an entire lifetime's worth of memories; every single key moment in their life which is connected to a removed memory would also have to be extracted to break the sequence and cause a change.

Example: As a kid, you're afraid of the dark. Maybe one of your parents puts a fancy looking night light in your room and tells you it's a magic light that will chase the monsters away. That nightlight remains in your bedroom for, say, five years. Even if the memory of the light being put in were to be removed, the memories of not being afraid because the light was there will remain.

Like a bracelet made of colorful beads on a string, even if you take one of the beads out the string that holds the thing together is still there, you've simply created a gap in the decorations on the bracelet. To destroy the bracelet, you'd have to cut the string and remove ALL of the beads; not just remove one or two of them.

On the subject of creating fake memories: The false memoriesi mplanted by Djinn are what they call hollows; devoid of any emotional energy and unable to replace a real memory within the overall sequence; he can glue it on to hide the gap between two memories, but the underlying connections between memories is impossible to alter.
To return to the bracelet metaphor: If you remove, say, a bright red bead with gold glitter in the plastic, he wouldn't be able to replace it with another red glittery bead. The replacement would be plain, clear plastic; and more importantly, the string that ties it all together still remains unbroken.

The Bureau of Supernatural Affairs

I don't really see it that way, because believe me, controlling other characters by force is one of my biggest pet peeves.

It's not so different from the post-hypnotic suggestion used by the MIBs to convince people that what they think they saw they did not see. Erase however much time from their memories, while they're dazed convince them something else happened during that span. Just more precise, and the memories are deleted entirely rather than being reversibly overwritten.

All that said, if it's still a no, I understand. I can also elaborate further on the specific mechanics of it if there's a chance it would change your mind.

The Bureau of Supernatural Affairs

@KatherinWinter
The race in question is a twist on Djinn/genies,

Basically rather than them being traditional mystical creatures with the near god-like ability to grant wishes, they possess a unique form of memory manipulation magic and feed on the memories of others to sustain their powers.

By using the wide-spread belief (one which was started centuries ago by their first king as a way to unite his people) that they can grant wishes as a cover they absorb real memories of the past few days, replace them with fake memories in which their lamp was discovered and the wishes were granted, use the infamous ironic twist of fate at the end of the wishes as an excuse for why the wishes are no longer reality, then walk away scot-free and well-fed.

If that version of Djinn lore is acceptable or you want to know more before deciding, please let me know ASAP.

The Bureau of Supernatural Affairs

I've got a couple questions.
1: Is a visual reference required?
2: Do I have to use existing lore for a mythical creature, or is a custom version acceptable?
3: What level of detail is required in backstory and description?

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Hail Hastur.

RWBY: Chronicle of Vault.

My reasons for not eventually applying;

Deciding which of the 20 or so student characters in my personal library to use

Adapting backstory to justify that character moving to this new kingdom, or otherwise placing them in that location.

Spending three days without sleeping for some reason which i'm still trying to figure out which made it difficult to do the previous things

Converting characters from their archived sheets onto the provided template, which would have required shaving down a LOT of details

And a bunch of more trivial IRL details which reduced the amount of free time I had available over the last couple weeks.

While I did miss the deadline, it is not a simple matter of trying to save face, I wasn't particularly interested in playing which delayed me in deciding which character to use, cascading into other events mentioned.

The reason I'm here is because Fox pointed me this way, thinking I might be interested, and I figured while I was here I could provide some insight based on my own experience running a similar game.

Sorry for causing trouble, and sorry for seeming aggressive/condescending. My intents were not mean spirited, merely misguided.

RWBY: Chronicle of Vault.

@Phantomlink959 Sir, Can I be blunt?

You're not even part of this rp, granted you're free to say whatever here, but just what are you doing? You've not even applied.

@CAS1006

What I do have is a full year of experience running a RWBY roleplay, and almost two years of ongoing experience studying and working with every minute detail of the setting.

My reasons for not applying are rather extensive, with the primary one being that while i was debating whether I would do so, and which character I would use, enough others applied that I figured it would be pointless.

If you'll look back, most if not all of the comments I have made were advisement based on personal experience of ways to ensure consistency with the canon to the closest possible degree.

RWBY: Chronicle of Vault.

Only restriction on that is that EVERY team thus far has used the leader's first initial.