RoseKnightJason

Spirit Guardian Championships (a pokemon inspired group roleplay for adults) [NULL AND VOID]

In 2008 a global event changed the course of humanity. Both it's politics, and it's understanding of the universe into which it had been born. Extra dimensional creatures poked through their reality into ours, seemingly evenly spread throughout each continent. Of course each nation and culture named them differently, but in colloquial English they became known as "Spirit Guardians," due to their seemingly supernatural nature.

The enigmatic beings not only seemed to defy the laws of physics, but in many cases resemble the monsters of ancient mythology. Since their emergency from another dimension, many humans have claimed they are fae, spirits, ghosts, astral guides, and even aliens from popular conspiracy theory. Scientists can only confirm that they did indeed emerge from a parallel dimension, our understanding of which has only just begun.

The case for a supernatural origin comes from the Spirit Guardian's abilities to manifest elemental properties right out of popular fantasy. Each creature can conjure up spells of fire, water, earth, air, electricity, or some combination of any two. What's more, human beings can participate in a ritual of sorts known as "Soul Resonance," with a Spirit Guardian to gain supernatural powers of their own corresponding to the individual creature.

In addition, these humans are granted supernatural durability and healing, with varying degrees of effectiveness. The only two ways a human who has resonated with a Spirit Guardian can be killed is by a fatal blow to the brain or heart (including decapitation). This has resulted in a certain amount of fear by the public. It has also resulted in resonated individuals becoming real life heroes, villains, and even supersoldiers at times. This pseudo immortality also resulted in recreational fights between spirit Guardians and trainers.

These exhibition matches reach epic proportions due to the super powered nature of the exchanges. Attacks can be extremely dangerous while being non lethal to enhanced humans, as well as their spirit guardians. Limbs can be regenerated in days, and thus the hyper-violent sport of Spirit Battling has become a global phenomenon right alongside the creatures themselves! After 26 years a true culture of battling has sprung out across the globe. Though originally started as unsanctioned street brawls by thrill chasers and adrenaline junkies, it now has proper governing bodies. Sports organizations implementing formal rulesets and putting on huge events for the public!

The most official of which is the International Spirit Guardian League. The ISGL catalogues competitors all over the world, and employs over 3000 professional competitors worldwide! The 2024 October tournament, set to be held in Las Vegas Nevada, is projected to be the highest grossing sporting event on American soil to date. Much to the chagrin of the NFL board of directors.

Despite all this hype, and economical impact, the mystery of why spirit guardians have appeared on our physical plane of existence is still very much unsolved. A few technologies capable of interacting with the guardian's physiology have been developed, however nothing relating to their home dimension or the manifestation of their magical powers has come to light. In addition, increasing reports of spirit guardians being used for warfare, crime, and terrorism continue to pop up around the globe.

What is your trainer's origin story? Why do they find themselves in Las Vegas, Nevada around the time of the ISGL pro tournament? Are they simply a tourist with a ticket to the event, a competitor, or perhaps an international spy sent to report on the American capabilities? Perhaps steal some trade secrets from the ISGL archives? What sort of person could resonate their soul with a magical being from another dimension? Let's all find out together!

Notes from the GM

Well if you've made it this far, I must have you sufficiently intrigued! For this setting, I have taken inspiration from pokemon, digimon, Naruto, hunter x hunter, and God of Highschool. If any of these series have made your imaginations race with original characters, that character may be able to fit into this setting with only minor modifications!

I am a lover of action adventure roleplay (as you probably guessed) and if you'd like to know more about my history as a player, please check my introduction post here on the site:

roleplayerguild.com/topics/192829-on-…

You'll see that I especially like combat. However, combat in roleplay tends to turn some people away. Many times it ends in bickering between players about how fast exactly one ability moves vs the reaction time your opponent has, and all the fun gets lost in those details. I understand this, though I believe it can be avoided with honest sportsmanship! To combat this, all the fights that take place in this roleplay will be pre-determined before they begin like a pro-wrestling match! Looking at the matchups of the character's abilities, motivations, and character traits we will decide how the battle will roughly play out. Then the choreographed scene can be fully fleshed out in character. Perhaps your character is cocky, and needs to lose to have some character growth. This could be the determining factor we use to decide this scene ends in your loss, and you can have a nice redemption arc later on!

Though, players have the option to do things with what I call the old fashioned way! Agree to be good sports about it and we can see who wins via logic! In this situation I will play the referee, and will have the final decision during disagreements in logic. If I am involved in a fight, another referee may be chosen from the players and agreed upon by the group.

To be clear on setting, both the creatures known as Spirit Guardians (our pokemon stand-ins) and their human trainer's will have elemental abilities. The mechanics of which will be further explained in another spoiler.

Though inspired by media originally intended for children, all participants in the roleplay should be adults, and all the characters involved will be 18+. I would like to include elements of violence, romance, and world politics in the story, after all. This series will resemble (and help me world build) for a graphic novel I'd like to write one day. I've always felt pokemon could have taken a more adult approach to their source materials like they did in the pokemon special series. One day I would like to fill that gap. You may use Pokemon as face claims for the creatures you choose to create, but think far outside of its borders as well for inspiration! I personally used Bing's ai image generator to come up with my references.

I will be adding much more lore regarding the ISGL in the next few days, but I just wanted to throw up what I had so far to test the waters here on the site! I do hope you'll join us for worldbuilding in the coming days, and I promise in the next couple I will finish my example character!

How exactly does soul resonance, and all the powers work?

So you've heard me use the term a dozen times now without explaining it. Well, when a human meets a spirit guardian (usually in nature) the guardian may take a liking to that human. By a mutual process called Soul Resonance, the spirit guardian shares a portion of their magic power with the human. The human then can harness the corresponding element (or elements) matching to that guardian.

A human can be linked to three guardians at any given time. Four resonances result in the catastrophic separation of the soul from the body. A human can only harness the powers of one guardian during battle, and must manually switch if they choose to use the powers of another. In other words, they may have a team of three but only battle with one elemental power set at a time. The abilities of the spirit guardian and human resonating may be different, but will always correspond to the same elements.

When choosing powers, please take most of your inspiration from Naruto, black clover, or Pokemon. Think straightforward, elemental effects. A chidori, wind blade barrage, something of that sort.

When using two powers, or "spells," at once, a human will use 2.5 times the mana as normal. When attempting to use all three spells granted by soul resonance, they will experience a 4 times mana drain this means it is not completely useless to do so, but is a huge risk indeed.

Now before your human met a spirit guardian (or multiple) they WERE just a normal human. Maybe an adventurous, dangerous, athletic, or otherwise special person, but a person nonetheless. This story will take a TON of inspiration from anime, so it's not unlikely an ancient Shinobi clan still happens to be active in the shadows. Perhaps a navy seal decided to become involved in the ISGL. Maybe a pro athlete of another kind, or an entertainer even! You can think big, and a little whacky even, but anything that goes past normal human limits should come from the spirit guardian motif.

You may choose to only have one spirit guardian partner. In this case, they may be powerful enough to take on whole teams with only the two of you. Three partners will give you more options, but less partners give you more firepower, ya dig?

As for power levels, any single ability should only be powerful enough to destroy a house at it's maximum output.

Character Template

Name:
Age:
Face Claim/description:
Biography:

Spirit Guardian 1:
Guardian Abilities:

Resonant Skills:

Spirit Guardian 2:

Guardian Abilities:

Resonant Skills:

Spirit Guardian 3:

Guardian Abilities:

Resonant Skills:

Character Example: Current ISGL Champion, Jason La Belle

Name: Jason "The Pyromancer" La Belle
Age: 25

Biography: Jason was raised in the hills of West Virginia in a small town with nothing worth mentioning within it. He was introduced to martial arts as a pass time, and the pursuit of it mostly kept him away from the drugs and alcoholism prevalent in the area. By nineteen he had found himself as an amateur MMA fighter, and showed potential in going Pro. He spent most of his time focusing on this budding career, and otherwise spent time with his friends or enjoying the great outdoors. One day while hiking deep into a state park, he found himself trapped on a mountain by a raging wildfire. He sought out fresh air via higher elevation until he could no longer escape the blaze. Just when he thought his life would end, a Spirit Guardian emerged from the inferno. A fire spirit whom expressed silent remorse as he led the human to safety.

Though like all guardians he could not communicate to Jason via words, Jason asked enough questions to glean that the guardian had trouble controlling his flames, and had started this forest fire during an altercation with another Spirit. Jason offered the skills he had from martial arts: discipline, temperance, and willpower. He returned to the mountain on several occasions to give advice to the guardian, until the fire spirit accepted to resonate with the young man, growing rather fond of him. This began Jason's career as a Spirit Guardian Trainer, and he fell in love with the pursuit.

Before ever competing in the ISGL, Jason spent time as a sort of vagabond traveling throughout the US. He would sometimes make money participating in tournaments, but he knew building a solid strategy before getting serious was key. He traveled to Yellowstone national Park with Zodias (a name chosen merely for how cool it sounded, for his first partner) after hearing about a fire/water hybrid spirit whom had taken to bathing in the fountain of Ol Faithful. After doing battle with him and earning his submission, Jason dubbed him "Geyser."

Then, Jason traveled to Hawaii to take a beast he dubbed Vesuvius whom had made the volcano on the big island erupt no less than three times. He used it's powers to add even more land mass to the island afterwards, to rebuild the homes of the displaced citizenry. It was after this event he felt he had a team worthy of conquering the league, and came in as a complete upset to the fire type division. After conquering his home court, he became the division-spanning world champion. Top of the entire league. This year will be the second world championship in which he will compete, and he's never been more fired up if all the press is to be believed!

Spirit Guardian 1: Zodias "The Wildfire,"


Guardian Abilities:

Star Gatling
Casting Time: Fast
A rapid fire of fireballs with very high rate of fire, and very low accuracy. Best for suppressing fire, or crowd control.

Charcoal Dance:
Casting Time: Fast
Zodias' summons twin curved blades which resemble charcoal. They are nimble and lend themselves to flowing, spinning combos. Enveloped in flame, they can slice and melt metal on contact. They are not brittle like their charcoal appearance would imply, and their swings pack a physical punch along with their heat.

Consuming Sun
Casting Time: medium
Zodias' most powerful technique. It forms a compressed ball of flame between it's hands, which then rapidly expands from this origin point. It envelopes Zodias' without damaging him, though this ability is so powerful it can even harm other fire trainers with flame resistant abilities (including Jason).

****ATTENTION THIS GAME IS NOW NULL AND VOID********

On again off again

So many forums, so many usernames, so many roleplays started, and so few finished. Where does one begin? Sorry to start on such a somber note, but I'm sure many roleplay veterans can relate! I've been in the game(s) since combat tournaments on chatango. At that site my love for writing action sequences began. This turned more into a penchant for hosting plot-heavy action adventure plots on roleplay Nation. Mainly because the community seemed to have shifted to a less combat centric culture, to a storytelling and character building culture. I don't hate this, (I'm still finding myself drawn back to group writing, after all) but it doesn't always give the same thrill as a good old fashioned super-powered scrap!

Enough rambling, however. Why come back at all if I've left so many times??? In short, I love writing! I want to write several novels one day, both illustrated and otherwise, but writing solo feels sometimes like being the god of a barren landscape. Capable of changing it into any shape you please, but the canvas never changes unless you do something to move it along. Every emotional beat feels artificial, almost like speaking to a dummy as a ventriloquist. When participating with others it becomes a game, (hence of course why we call it roleplaying) and every fight by extension becomes a 4D chess match! (The fourth dimension being superpowers lol) Yet I digress again.

In short I am here to make friends and fictional memories. Bounce some ideas off of other writers, and live briefly in a world of fantasy and adventure. Hopefully the rest of you can relate! The last time I visited this site in particular I participated in a roleplay about mech suits which ran on pseudo magical suns and were each demigods in their own right. That's correct, the mech suits themselves were the demigods. I loved its originality, and thus this site has a special place in my heart. I hope there are still plenty of creative types like that to find! Right now I'm thinking of fielding something slightly pokemon inspired with sci-fi fantasy elements. Stay tuned!
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