STATUS:
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. -John 16:33
9 yrs ago
Current
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. -John 16:33
Raiya cringed a bit when Nemo used the Japanese word, "daijoubu" in an English sentence. It wasn't really that she had a problem with Nemo speaking Japanese when he clearly was not Japanese himself. It was merely the mixture of Japanese and English that got to her. She thought about saying something about it, but decided to just leave it at her physical fidgeting expression of discomfort.
Raiya raised an eyebrow at Nemo, she couldn't figure out if he was serious or not. Although, obviously as a mage well versed in the theory and practice of the mystical arts himself, Nemo knew full well that mages could not just simply recharge themselves by absorbing the element that is closest to their aura element. So she decided it was just a joke that Nemo was playing, so she just decided to retort with, "Beep Boop: Raiya 9000 must recharge her batteries in order to perform her operational duties Beep Boop."
Raiya frowned at the thought of being dropped. Weighing the pros and cons, she decided to refrain from saying anything further about his reddened face. But when he brought up the fact that he was restrained and gimped due to her mistake her slight frown tunred into a forlorn expression as she remembered how she made a blunder out of the last fight. She just wanted to curl up in a ball and take a nap, consciousness was too depressing for her to grasp at the moment. Every time she recalled her mistake she cringed within herself.
"I-it was all my fault... I messed up... I didn't account for the enchanted blade..." She said in a meek voice, "And... my mistake may have just cost us the mission..." There were almost tears behind her confession of guilt, but she didn't have the strength to cry anymore, so she just continued to frown.
Raiya could not see what happened from the position she was laying, but she figured that Nemo destroyed the generator somehow due to the loudness of what sounded like an magic induced explosion. Nemo walked back over to her after he finished destroying the generator and began to pick Raiya up in a princess carry. She could feel the warmth from his arms and the closeness of his body, which suddenly made her extremely self conscious, which she personally found extremely odd. Why do I care what this guy thinks of me? He's a roadblock, an enemy. She decided to quickly drop her train of thought because she was starting to feel extremely uncomfortable.
She looked up to notice Nemo was blushing. The otherwise livid pale face was now fairly flushed, which made Raiya feel even more comfortable. "You better not be getting any weird ideas," Raiya said in an irritated voice, "You pervert." She added. She looked away towards the direction the were headed. I'm useless, She thought I wouldn't be in this position if I was competent. It's my fault that I am a burden on this mission She reminded herself.
Raiya could feel the warm tingle of her flesh and bone being knit back together. While there was some sligh discomfort in the bone being moved back, it palee in comparison to the pain she was just feeling a few moments beforehand. And with the shock her body was in, any normal discomfort felt extremely dampened.
Raiya nodded her head at Nemo's question. "Those threads work on wounded pride too?" she joked as she attempted to stand. Rising up, she realized that her stamina was all used up due to her tapped out mana wells, and as she attempted to take the first step she unceremoniously fell flat on her face. She flopped herself on her back, looking up at Nemo."Looks like I'm all out of mana. Also might be a tad bit anemic... So either I take a nap and we wait or you carry me out of here." Raiya said from her sprawled position on the ground.
When it is said, this word evokes the idea of illusions and parlor tricks. Perhaps it also evokes thoughts of unexplained phenomena in the days of yore. It might even evoke the idea of spirituality; surely invoking the miracles and powers of the unknown has a spiritual connotation. However, in our universe, magic is simply nothing more than our imaginations grasping at the answer for what we cannot comprehend. But consider for a moment a universe much akin to our own. A world interlaced with real magic; a universe where everything spiritual, everything religious could be explained by magic. This such universe is the universe where our Roleplay takes place.
Enter the universe of Paragon’s End.
Sorcery can be traced back as far as history has been written. Although the crucifixion of Jesus Christ sparked a major Magi movement, it was not until the early 4th century when Constantine the Great adopted Christianity into Rome that the most powerful Arcanocracy arose (government ruled through occult means). Although the Vatican is the largest Arcanocracy, every religion has their own forms of magic and theology. The occult and arcane are dismissed in popular opinion as myths and legends. Though unbeknownst to the general populace, the occult is very much a reality. The secrecy of arcana is intentional. Although everyone can eventually learn an aspect of arcana, not everyone is born with a sensitivity to the ebbs and flows of mana. Most people would have to dedicate their entire lives to even achieve a tenth of what a natural born Talent can achieve. There have been many hundreds of times in history where those who were Untalents rose up against Magi, even hunting them to extinction. The secrecy of arcana was necessary to preserve the lives of those with knowledge. This secrecy has created an underworld of societies; an entire web of sub-societies with their own politics, their own bartering, their own wars. This underworld is only known to those who are a part of it. And you, you are a part of it.
Factions:
There are five main factions to choose from when creating a character (although there are five as of now, you are not limited to these five and I am open to the idea of others if they are fleshed out enough) Also know that the setting of this RP is a setting requiring your character to devote themselves to something other than their origin faction (this is explained in THE STORY BEGINS).
Catholic Arcanocracy
Catholicism is the single biggest faction in Paragon’s End. As stated earlier Talents only make up about 0.01% of the population, Catholicism has the largest amount of Talents at about 40% of the total number of talents (around 296000.) With the knowledge to sense Talents and locate them, Catholic scouts enlist Talent’s at young ages. Once enlisted, the Talents are taught the basics of arcana within the local Cathedral until they reach the proficiency level of Magi. Once they reach the proficiency level of Magi, they are able to embark upon missions for the Vatican. Catholic Magi think of magic as simply God’s miracles working through them. It is common amongst the Arch-Magi to think of any other magic usage outside of the church as heresy, that those who use magic who are not catholic use the power of Satan. Proficiency Level titles from least to greatest Novice Apprentice Anointed Magi Grand-Magi Arch-Magi Papal-Magi (of which there can only be one elected from the arch-magi after the death of the previous Papal-Magi)
(Anyone can make only up to a Grand-Magi character. Arch-Magi are story relevant and to achieve Arch-Magi status is the highest regarded status aside from Papal-Magi which is not attained through power but through election)
Societas Academia
Societas Academia is a religiously unaffiliated school of magic. The academia accepts both Talents and Untalents, and even has Untalents as some of its chief officers. Societas Academia has more Talents than Untalents. This has created a hierarchy amongst the student body wherein the Talents are popular and the Untalents are seen as social outcasts. Once a student has become a graduate, they can choose to either become a professor or an enlister. The professors teach the students, and the enlisters scout out potential candidates and enlist them at the school. Out of the 0.01% of Talents they have around 20% (148,000) of the Talents. They have different smaller institutions all across the world, but the largest main institution where they study aspect training is in Northern California hidden in the Redwood National Park. Proficiency level titles from least to greatest Primary schooler Secondary schooler Aspect trainee (once finished with secondary school, the student is allowed to choose one of four aspects to specialize in Scholar [this is a research role, mostly dominated by Untalents. They go on expeditions to find ancient knowledge all around the world. They right reports and create new spells and sub-aspects] Cleric [this is a medical role, they specialize in learning to heal all types of infirmities] Ruin Mage [this is a combat role, they specialize in learning destructive spells that cause devastation to their enemies] and Knight Mage [this is a combat role that specializes in using close quarters spells to gain the upper hand in melee combat] Even though a student can only specialize in one aspect, students are already expected to know enough general spells that would fall into each aspect before specializing. )
Graduate [Professor/Enlister]
Dean (the dean is elected from professors and enlisters. The professor or enlister has to be older than thirty years old to qualify for election. Once the previous dean retires, or dies, an election takes place to vote in a new dean from the pool of middle aged applicants)
Disciples of Salem
While the Underworld does its best to hide itself from the world, not everyone that is not a Talent is clueless to the occult. The Disciples of Salem is an organization of Untalent witch hunters. They see Talents as abnormalities and have dedicated generations of effort into creating an art that can counter magic so they can hunt all Talents down and kill them. Instead of utilizing a large well of mana within themselves, they rely on manipulating the mana that nature provides. With the small amount of mana a normal person has, they can use that small amount of mana as a control point to manipulate the mana in nature itself. Most if not all of their spells (Disciples of Salem call them Arts) have to do with mana nullification and spell nullification. They are all trained in hand to hand combat, and are very dangerous to Talents. They’ve got about a hundred thousand members, and their membership is quickly growing. They have bases of operations spread out all across the united states and some in Europe, but the main base of operation is in Danvers Massachusetts (originally Salem.) Proficiency level titles from least to greatest. Initiate Fighter Scout Tracker Hunter Witch Hunter The leader of the Disciples is always chosen from the descendants and living relatives of Abigail Williams, who was the first to start developing the abilities needed to hunt Talents. The current leader is Will Snyder the great great great great great grandson of Abigail Williams.
Cult of the Enlightened
The Cult of the Enlightened is a cult who believes in ferocious beasts of limitless power called The Old Ones. The cult’s entire purpose is to do the bidding of the Old Ones all in order to bring back The Old Ones from the realm they are contained in. Once the Old Ones are released they will bring genocide and enslavement upon the world. The cult does not have a hierarchy of proficiency; they see everyone who is a follower of the cult as equals. They have around 10% of the world population of Talents (around 74000)
Protestant Magi and Pagan Magi
The protestant and Pagan Magi make up the rest of the 30% of the population of Talents. Because they are so dispersed within their organization and beliefs, they are lumped together but not treated as a single entity. By themselves there are over 200 different subgroups with different beliefs.
Creating a Character
In this universe there are two types of people, the Talents (those born with the natural ability and sensitivity to mana) and the normal Untalents (those without the natural ability and sensitivity to mana.) Everyone is born with a small amount of mana within them, but it takes a large natural amount of mana to be constituted as a Talent. Though there are those who devote themselves to the occult that are Untalents but it takes years of devotion to increase the amount of mana a person naturally holds. Only about 0.01% (around 740,000 people total) of people born are Talents. You can choose to have your character be from one of any of the factions. Just know that the setting of this RP is a setting requiring your character to devote themselves to something other than their origin faction.
The Story Begins With...
31 year old Felix Glasius has been with the Catholic church his whole life. Rising through the ranks of Magi at an early age, he became an Arch-magi after creating his own spell and fighting style, Manaegis! Even though he dedicated his life to this organization, he began to have his doubts about their authenticity when, during a summit, a fellow Arch-mage Thadeus suggested they focus their efforts on finding ancient artifacts of power called Paragons to ensure Catholic supremacy. The motion was voted down by the Papal-magi, and Felix thought that had been the end of it. Four months later, the Papal-magi died, and Thadeus's brother Cornelius was voted in as Papal-magi. Thadeus brought the motion to secure the Paragons up once more at the summit after his brother was voted in. This time the vote was in favor of the conquest. Although, Felix had very bad feelings about the new mission, he continued his job as normal. One night, Felix had a dream, a dream of a great suffering that came from the Paragons. The dream showed Felix that the Vatican was not the only entity searching for the Paragons. In the dream a powerful voice told him that many forces of evil were attempting to gather the Paragons, and Felix needs to gather together a group of guardians to stop those who wished to bring the nine Paragons together. When he awoke, he was sitting at his desk in his room, with a pen in hand and parchment in front of him. The parchment had names, and the locations of the guardians he needed to gather together all written in his handwriting.
This is where the story begins. Your character is one of the guardians that Felix wrote down during his vision. Are you ready to fight for the world?
RULES
Grammar and typography are a must. If your post looks inadequate you will be warned. If your post continues to look inadequate you will be kicked.
Characters have to have a fleshed out character design, no gary/mary stu/sues (character depth), not overpowered, and can not be direct ripoffs of a already well established character in popular media. (Original)
No God Modding! If you are writing a post that has a direct effect on another person's character, make sure they are okay with the effect and outcome. If you do not want to do this, leave you interactions with other player characters open ended. Collaboration is a major part of making an RP thrive, so talking and collaborating with other players outside of the RP to dictate the actions of your characters is highly encouraged.
Post length needs to be at least three sentences. It is deeply encouraged to write more well thought out posts with many words and paragraphs, but it is not mandated. Three sentences is the minimum amount a post should contain. I will make exceptions for certain posts if you absolutely cannot come up with something, but I am of the belief that three sentences is not difficult to write at all.
This RP has some religious influence in the lore, but I do not want to see any debates over religion here. This RP is purely fictional, so leave all prejudices behind. Don't do anything fourth wall breaking or passive aggressive about it either.
Be civil towards your fellow Role-players. You don't have to like each other, but you have to at least act like you respect each other. I do not want to see infighting of any kind. If I see infighting, it will result in a warning. Two warnings and you are out on the third. Don't be a jerk, just don't do it.
Name
Sex Age Appearance information related to appearance under the bolded Appearance header.
Pictures related to appearance or more info related to appearance.
Raiya could not tell what was going on in the fight. Her vision was blurred by her loss of blood she was constantly coughing up. And with the amount of pain she was in, she couldn't be bothered with paying attention to anything other than dulling the pain with alcohol. She had not desire to die, but her code of honor meant that she deserved to die for losing in a bout to the death. There was a saying in Japan, "there's nothing worse than scars on a warrior's back". The saying had a higher implication than the literal meaning. Scars on the back were a sign of either cowardice or incompetence. If it was the former, the implication was that the warrior escaped by running, a coward. If it was the ladder, the implication was that the warrior only lived because his opponent refused to grant them death, which was worse than the sentence of death itself. And while it was not her opponent who spared her life, she could not help but dwell on the fact that she was incompetent, that she could make such a glaring mistake. Emotionally, she felt shattered.
When Nemo inevitably defeated the enemy, he came over to Raiya. While the scent of blood was on the air, oddly enough it wasn't as thick as Raiya would have guess it would be with a 1 on 1 with Nemo. Must have been the Muramasa Raiya guessed. She'd never seen one in action, but she had heard the tale of its ability to absorb blood. She would have never guessed it was real.
At Nemo's request Raiya lifted her tattered tank top and fish net skirt to reveal a large cauterized wound which had been reopened a bit from the kick and was leaking a fair bit of blood. She attempted to speak, hacking out further blood onto the ground, "...r-rib... lung" She mustered out in between coughing fits. It seemed her injured and weakened state left her more agreeable than normal.
Raiya's wait for death seemed impossibly long. Her side throbbed in agony as she continued to cough up more blood. Right as she felt the blood lust of her enemy in front of her the swing her enemy issued was promptly blocked. She looked up to see Nemo intervene. Raiya couldn't decided whether she was happy or angry that Nemo had stopped her enemy from issuing the final blow. Her punctured lung kept her from pondering too heavily on the subject.
Raiya began to drag herself over to the corner of the room, crawling slowly on her hands and knees, each movement further increasing her agony. Once she reached the corner of the room, she propped her back up against the wall. Raiya would have normally used a spell to heal her wounds. But her manawells were all but tapped out. So all she could do was dull the pain with a flask of alcohol she pulled out of her manainventory.
Raiya had never used the plasma katana in an actual battle before. Sure she had used it in training, and in fact, she was the one who theory crafted the spell and spell medium herself. While the hilt medium for channeling her aura through was her brain child, she had her gang's R and D team actually create the thing according to her specifications. In all of her test trials running the manadachi, she measured her mana before and after cutting through an object. All in all, her tests concluded that the weapon was efficient. However, she overlooked one thing that she did not think to account for. Her error was that she did not factor in collision with enchanted objects.
After her frontal assault with the pulse orbs' distraction she felt especially exhausted. Reaching deep into her manawells she realized that she was on low reserves. Impossible! Raiya thought. She stood there attempting to account for the extreme loss of mana, only to realize her mistake was not accounting for the enchanted sword. As she stood frozen in exhaustion and panicked contemplation, she did not pay attention to the enemy who launched a quick counter attack. She parried the cutlass, draining her mana even further which furthered her exhaustion. All of this distracted her enough to not see the kick aimed at her new wound. The kick connected and sent her tumbling to the side of where she was standing. She rolled a few times before coming to a stop face down.
The pain was immense, like a searing brand was being constantly forced into her ribs. She attempted to return to her feet but only manage to get to her knees before she coughed up a massive amount of blood. No doubt he had broken one of her ribs which had punctured her lung. "D-damnit!" She cursed, tears welling up in her eyes. How could I be so stupid!? I could have taken him easily if I hadn't had gambled with my untested technique. This is it isn't it? I won't ever get to find my parent's killer. I will die here without being fulfilled. She cursed herself as she punched the ground, awaiting her inevitable death that she was too fatigued to stop herself.
Raiya smirked at the distress that her enemy was displaying over the damage sustained to his blade. And further scoffed at his comment about honor, "You know nothing about my honor. And even more so, do not pretend to know about the honor of the kenkaku in history. Bushido is dead, and so is chivalry for that matter. All that is left is personal honor. You abide by your code and I'll abide by mine. But do not presume to know what my code is." She spat.
When he rushed her, she made a mistake. Not focusing on manalysis, and relying on her enhanced instincts, she blocked the blade with her plasma sword. Immediately a burst of steam clouded her vision. She was about to react by leaping as far backwards as possible, but before she could do so, the familiar searing agony of a knife wound flared in her right ribs. "Agh!" she let out a brief cry of agony. Fueled by adrenaline and her enhanced attributes she leapt backwards 15 feet. She looked down to assess the damage, noting a 4 inch blade lodged between her lower ribs. She wasn't coughing blood, so he had not punctured her lung, which was good. However, she could not assess her internal damage any further than a surface level diagnostic through the checklist of her apparent faculties such as breathing.
"Damnit!" Raiya screamed in anger as she gripped the hilt of the small knife and pulled it from her side, tossing it away. Blood began to spill out profusely from her side to the ground, she noted that he probably hit a main artery. She used the mana in her left hand to sear her would closed with a cauterizing spell. Her anger was sparked now, and she was more ready to attack than she had been initially. She charged a spell into her left hand and swiped her hand outwards, unleashing to fast moving pink orbs at her target, each orb arcing towards a different side of her opponent. The orbs each carried small electric current that would immobilize a normal target. Then she rushed straight at her opponent, issuing a quick horizontal slash once she got within range.
Raiya saw the blue ball of flames surging towards her. There was little doubt that it would either horribly maim her or straight up kill her if it hit her. But she stood fast and finished her chant, "...kaminari o shōkan suru!", she shouted as the fireball closed in. As soon as she uttered the final word of her spell, a pink shifting blade of plasma instantly burst forth from the hilt creating a curved katana blade of pure burning plasma which was contained behind a thin invisible mana containment barrier which created the shape of the blade.
The fireball was upon her now and she had to react fast. Raiya still had enough time to activate her speed aura and moved out of the way just in time. She could feel the heat radiating from the ball is it sailed past her and exploded on the wall far behind her. She flitted towards her enemy, her blade almost weightless in her right hand, and her other hand lifted up with mana charged in it, ready to cast a spell at a moments notice. She closed in on her opponent, quickly lept and dropped down with a vertical slash on the side of her opponent. If he blocked the slash, his blade would either be cut in half if it was not enchanted, or begin to become unstable as the enchantment would be unable to shirk such vast power.
