Shotgun Bear

The Dust: Relaunch

I'm out. This isn't worth getting insulted over. Schatz is a fun character and all, but I certainly wasn't expecting the condescension. I came here so I didn't have to impress and I could just characterize and interact with something a little different and fun. If I wanted to vastly overwrite a simple character, I'd be a comic book author. Peace.

The Dust: Relaunch

@Aeonumbra

Again, oh well. It wasn't intended to be practical. It was never intended to be practical. It was a facet of her character. Schatz is lewd. She's a lewd person. The first line in her bio sums up her loves in life and one of them is sex, so yeah, she's gonna look like that. That's not saying she'll be super lewd or that sex'll even happen just because she's there, but she's certainly a lot more sexually liberal. Treading the line of 'dangerous' is her thing.

Great Attractor is totally removed from actual magnetism and is far more facile than I think you're reading it. The 'field' of applied magnetism is entirely different from a magnetic field; it's an area around an object where the effect of Great Attractor can come into play. Within that field, objects become magnetic.

I'll throw the explanation into a subset of Ohmosexual.

Rocket as in the back end, not the full thing. They're not magnetic on their own, but the casing sometimes is. I will, however, provide a full summation of what Chutney is.

There is no 'must' with writing. Writing is not made of quantifications. Your setting, however, does have a realistic limit and I don't have enough lore nor a broad understanding of where that limit lies. You've even stated that I don't have the knowledge necessary to suggest the level of realism.

The magnetic field itself is pretty small and can be nullified through conscious effort, given Schatz's abilities center around magnetism.

Way to strip context from what I was saying with those selective quotes, though. That's a rhetorical fallacy. It's more necessity than it is personal taste, but personal taste still plays a big part. I say a lot of things similar to this in the bio, like why she doesn't opt for at least a skirt. She's gonna push the envelope, again. It's who she is.

I don't design things for the sake of design. I design them because it's in line with the character.

The Dust: Relaunch

@Aeonumbra

The images are meant to go hand in hand with the bio, being that I drew them. I'm aware of the taboo and if you'd done a closer reading of the Appearance section, I think you'll find that it's part of her personality. Yes, it's ridiculous and over the top but she is characterized that way. I'm sorry that our personal tastes conflict, but the character is a study in contrasts. Chutney is the big fuckoff hammer. She has the hat and a scarf, too, so, you know. Quasi-shade.

'Hot-freeze' means that, if there were a bunch of iron filings (in this instance, though it can be anything magnetic) in the air on a particularly cloudy day, those filings would be able to connect their attraction fields and totally solidify a cloud by attracting the vapor to them. What I was really trying to get at is that Great Attractor works with gases as much as liquids and solids. Great Attractor itself isn't a magnetic law and was never intended to be. I was exercising the creative freedom thing to make a power I thought was kinda neat and not all that excessive. On the subject of weird abilities, I'm totally fine with not having bio-organic magnetism. I don't care to have powerful characters, just fun and interesting ones.

The whole bone thing is just the sheer force of their personal magnetism. It's automatically resetting her to a stable state. That I admit to being a touch hard to swallow. However, using force to meld things together still happens, it's not impossible.

The whole thought behind the cauterization is that the body itself is a maintained whole, but breaks in it also break the pattern. Thus, it sucks itself back together and the polarities, naturally rapidly switching, create a rapid friction. The heat isn't constant and I think you took my imagery a little literally with the 'raging fire' thing. Wait a minute, you're allowing the moon to not be, but warm people is too much? The basic idea of her power is that her unwounded body is a 'stable state' and lacerations really fuck that up. She can't do knife fights.

The scarf is just a scarf...Poncho. It keeps things off of her like a poncho does, it doesn't nullify things. It came before the powers in her bio.

But in all seriousness, the design came first and it, like Schatz, is silly and over the top. It's not her being 'da sexiest,' it's just fun. I'd really rather not have to take the time to do a total redesign over taste, because you did emphasize 'creative freedom' in your Interest Check.

EDIT: I'm just gonna point out that if you strip this of context I'm done. When I refer to the 'design' I'm referring to the character itself who is older than this roleplay and is just the type of person who would wear that kind of thing.

Oh, and I take huge exception to implying that Schatz is a Sue just because of the way she looks. That is the epitome of judging a book by its cover. I know you don't mean to come off as rude but rule one's ''Respect your GM'' and you state within it that you'll try to do the same.

The Dust: Relaunch

@Aeonumbra

Hey, I'm just glad you're getting around to it. No need to rush yourself; I'd rather have a meticulous GM who gets things done just a little late than one who rushes right through shit and accepts everything.

However, I've got about an hour-twenty as of this post before I'm off to go do terrible things with terrible people, so keep in mind that I may take a long time to answer your questions after that timeframe.

The Dust: Relaunch

@Aeonumbra

Gimme the full rundown of technical questions you said you had(?), because it's absolutely better that I answer them here than in PM.

Signs of something bad happening.

Big warning sign for me is when the GM doesn't put all the information you need out there in the open but still expects you to adhere. Had this happen a few times, and it often leads to 'little' things being left out of their narrative when the roleplay starts proper, only to get thrown in your face like an invisible smoking gun.

I tend to get antsy about a roleplay when more than half of the characters have an 'edgy' backstory. Tends to turn into a power struggle for who can narrate their angst better.

That being said, I haven't been in enough roleplays on the Guild, so I can't speak to the community here.

The Dust: Relaunch

Oh man, are we posting tanks, because--

This was a little bit more obnoxiously huge than I thought.

...My concept of 'tank' may be skewed. Thanks, Tank Girl.

The Dust: Relaunch

@Aeonumbra

My characters tend to be unapologetically vibrant.

Feel free to nail me for not matching the theme of gritty and brown.

Schatz

Basics

more like 'hider the rest of your body'

Alternate perspective, older image

Name: Renata 'Schatz' Monsigny
Age: 24
Appeared Age: 18-23, depending on who you ask
Height: 5'8''
Weight: 132 lbs.
Eye Color: A series of radial markings mar her pupil, ranging from deep green to violent, glowing neon. Her irises radiate light of a similar color.
Hair Color: Excessively salmon. It's dyed. Natural brunette.
Physical Disabilities: She and clothes don't get along too well, thanks to her powers. No sensation in the majority of her left arm and slightly weaker motor skills.
Physical Identifiers:

• Dragon tattoo reaches all the way across her shoulderblades and wraps around to the base of her spine.
• Big old burn on her arm.

Appearance: Schatz is, by her own terms, a 'pretty lady.' Curvy-though-a-bit-thin, she takes extreme pride in her appearance. Her hair sits in such a way that it hides a particularly nasty scratch running from her jaw to the base of her ear, and the way it's styled is entirely intentional. Her taste in clothing is more due to necessity than it is personal taste, but Schatz still takes the time to make sure she at least looks unique. Her taste in violent color is an extension of her personality, and the racing checkers an insight into her passion.

That being said, Schatz could just as easily have opted for a skirt and actual shoes. Her clothing is as surprisingly easy to move in as it is astonishingly provocative, and it's more likely that her personal choices were more to reach the pedals of her gigantic heaps of rapidly moving metal than they were for being on one's feet all day. Even so, the care she puts into her wardrobe--white clashes hard with the wasteland day-to-day--is meticulous and entirely unnecessary, yet she still keeps to it.

Currently working on building muscle definition after her run-in with certain doom, she's still recovering from her comatose foray, and it shows. She's still terribly slim, and her stomach has only really built up fat, leaving it smooth. Her arms have gotten strong, however, from practice swings with Chutney.

Background

Residence: Laguna
Profession: A sort of taxi—she'll ferry you all over the island if you don't mind the breakneck speeds she prefers and you pay bullets up front.
Aligned Faction: Though not actually enlisted, she subscribes to the tenets—and the prosperity entailed—of the Motum Diversum.
Relatives:

• Albert Mosnigny: “Old fuck that smelled like cheese! And prejudice. I mean—he didn't smell like prejudice. He was an asshole. He may have smelled like asshole, though.”
• Elaine Skaster: “She remarried, that old bitty! Bit of a slut, if by 'bit' I mean 'total' and 'slut' I mean 'gold digging bleach blonde garbage whore.'
  Who the hell manages to have their hair bleached n--Fuck off!”
• Cailean Monsigny: “The son Bert wanted me to be. Instead, I was born first and Cailean continues to be useless.
  Bit of a shitcanoe.”

Backstory

Renata is a simple girl with simple pleasures: Namely, pleasuring herself, explosions, and the occasional hit of epinephrine.

Usually mixtures of the three. An adrenaline junkie since she fell off a cliff at the age of six, saved only by a fox breaking her fall (and its spine), Renata's trademark was boundless amounts of enthusiasm. Her father, co-owner of Monsigny & Bodle, a popular scrapping and rigging establishment, made a tidy sum, dressed tidy, and led a tidy lifestyle. Renata was not. Prone to scavenging in her youth, she acquired the nickname Schatz from her mother—which was both a byword for 'sweetheart' and 'treasure.' It stuck, as it fell in line with her natural narcissistic tendencies. Schatz grew from scavenger to tinker, toying with motor parts and wheels she could pilfer from her dad's scrapyard.

Renata has something of a history with fractures. Her first 'car'--basically an engine with three wheels and a seat—crashed into a tree at 15 miles an hour and snapped her knee backwards. She broke her arm in two places in the subsequent runs with the half-destroyed 'vehicle.' Schatz's happy place was away from her family and among danger. She spent more time in the scrapyard in her youth than in her own home; climbing things, breaking bones, making things blow up—her solace was disaster. It was in Schatz's teenage years that she found her love of adrenaline was something more than just a passion; it bordered on fetishistic. She didn't so much want the high as she did lust for it, and her taste for danger turned into a full-blown addiction.

Much to the chagrin of her pursuers, this meant that most makeout sessions took place at 60 miles an hour.

Her affection for speed became something entirely more lucrative when she realized her juryrigged contraptions could easily ferry people across the landscape. At the age of 19, she opened up her own business, a taxi service meant for the wanderers of the wasteland.

Schatz's first voyage ended in tragedy. The vehicle's fuel tank burst, engulfing her passenger and nearly reducing Schatz herself to ash. Her left arm was burned terribly, though the rest of her bailed clear of the carnage. Worse yet, she was in the middle of the desert, two days from Harlem and she certainly wasn't making the trek up the Big Empty. With a useless arm and no means of rapid travel, Schatz's optimism turned fatalistic in a heartbeat. If it wasn't for a dishonored Aqueous wandering the badlands, she was sure to have died. Covered in rags and carrying a pack mule's share of survival gear, the man must have gone mad from the heat. His attire was strange; in respect for his sacrifice, Schatz took his hat, which helped keep the sand out of her nose.

His corpse facilitated her survival. She not only made it to Harlem, but took it upon herself to finish the hike all the way to Laguna. On the thoroughfare, though, she came upon more impediments than Schatz would care to admit; she had the body of an outdoorsy mechanic and no weapon to defend herself with. By the time she'd made it back home, Schatz was down to the clothes on her back and her stomach was screaming for sustenance. It was then that she came up with the idea for Chutney. Given her slim-but-solid frame, she was used to carrying weights, not slinging them around. In order to protect herself, she enlisted the help of a few close friends and scoured her father's scrapyard. In the process, she found an old yellow poncho stashed into a car's chassis and a couple of magnets. With the help of a particularly resourceful tailor, the newsboy cap and now-scarf became something of Schatz's trademark, if only as a neat party trick.

In the process of protecting herself against her own dumb mistakes, she took it upon herself to get a tattoo—a reminder that just because something is fun does not make it any less ill-fated. Schatz worked on making her machines more passenger-friendly, perusing the scrapyard's new acquisitions for viable, functional parts. Neither hammer nor reminder could save Schatz from herself, though. After three years' worth of refining, she'd finally created a vehicle capable of making it from Sinoma to Serenity with great ease. Of course, being the girl she was, she decided to run it over the tallest dune she could find as a final test. She'd been ill for the past few days, but she thought nothing of it and pushed on with the test run.

She sneezed, her fingers slipped and the wheel spun underneath her.

Her rib cage turned to splinters. Her breath stuck like a molten iron in her throat. Death approached, shrouding the edge of her vision with its cape fashioned of the void. A Spark of life, however, came to her in her dying moments.

It was then that her powers arose. She felt her bones move. She felt every splinter mesh and crack and force itself together, an eternity of utter agony, and then... Black.

Schatz was in a coma for a month. When she woke, a wisp of her former self, the bedsheets were on fire. Or—they weren't. Something was burning underneath. She could feel it. It was like her skin was being barbequed. Her atrophied, bony arms threw the sheet to the side with great effort, and she realized the source of the fire was herself. By the time the nurse had arrived, Schatz was spreadeagled on the cool tile floor, her patient's gown thrown haphazardly over the bedside.

By the time her next birthday came around, Schatz had grown into the powers bestowed upon her. Though she lamented not being able to carry around backpacks or stand too close to magnets, her indomitable optimism pushed her ever onward. Finally living with a mote of trepidation before diving headlong into disaster, the Schatz today takes the ramifications of her actions into account—but she'll still probably do terminally stupid things anyway.

She's like to take it upon herself to 'help the world,' somehow.

Gear

Weapons:

• Chutney: As in, will turn you into chutney. A big, dumb rocket hammer made out of a wheel, road spikes, a motor, a bunch of rockets, a fuel tank, a car battery attached to an extension cord and a chainsaw's ignition pull. The wheel serves as a sort of chainsaw, with the road spikes welded to the rubber--this is the electrical aspect of the hammer. The rockets on the other end, however, require fuel and allow Schatz to swing far beyond her capacity. The road spikes are highly magnetic, but the rocket exhausts on the back are not. It's big. It's dumb. Beyond all rational probability, it works.
  It will fuck you to pieces.
  Somehow, it's amazingly stable and can even be ridden for short distances. Clocks an uneven 20mph.
  (It also has a sixteen hour charge time for four hours of use.)

Armor:

Hat: It's awfully important to note that the hat comes down. The yellow band is actually a nylon sack attached to the brim, and the goggles are part of the hat itself. Schatz can pull it down as a shield against dirt and wind.

Scarf: Is not actually a scarf. The two long bits are actually tassels and are attached to the 'scarf' from underneath. A makeshift seal made out of magnetic rocks in a rubber tube congruent to Schatz's hat protect her against any unwanted foreign matter, and the scarf can be pulled out and away from its tucked position to turn into a poncho.
Obviously, Schatz prefers to use neither of these if she doesn't have to. Often, she'll only do so if she really doesn't want her clothes to get dirty or she is driving absurdly, disgustingly fast.

Ammunition:

• Dirty Rounds: None. She and guns don't get along too well.
• High Grade Rounds: 37 .454 rounds for the sake of trade.
• Heavy Ammunition: If she had any, they'd be fireworks within the hour.

Messenger Bag (It lies on her hip, which isn't terribly offensive to her skin.)

• Items Within:

Two canteens, a couple small metal pipes, a sheet, and some kindling--Schatz makes her own fires, but there's not always wood around.

Immortalis Information

Manifested Phenomena: Magnetism
Unique Abilities:

Great Attractor: If a sufficient amount of sufficiently magnetic material is in the air, Schatz could hot-freeze a cloud solid. That being said, she'd need a lot of metal shavings to do so. Essentially, magnetic objects create a field of applied magnetism, for Schatz: this tiny field, less than a millimeter per 10 grams of magnetic material, allows her to attract even non-magnetic objects towards the material.

Ohmosexual: Her body is magnetic. Wounds will immediately close and cauterize due to the rapid frictional force. If the ground is sufficiently magnetic, she can even repel herself off of it and send herself flying forward. Her body, also, is its own stable magnet-- it carries a magnetic field that can be suppressed, and will automatically revert to a 'stable' state--her bones will move back into position if cracked and lacerations will close until it becomes 'Schatz' once again.

Strengths:

But It Was Worth It!: There's just something about a lady who's willing to break her arm just to have her foot get a meeting with your jaw. She's not intimidating so much as she is so impossibly over the top with everything she does. Her optimism is seconded only by her incorrigibility.

It Works! Somehow: If any of the 'working' parts have to rotate really, really fast, it's gonna do it. Schatz'll do it. She'll show everyone.
Subsequently, Schatz'll break all her bones trying to ride it. This hypothetical was worth it.
Don't drive, kids.

You Are Not... Were Not Prepared: By the very nature of her abilities, Schatz prefers her fights short. Her taste for spontaneity extends to her scuffles—don't monologue in front of her or you will assuredly be losing limbs during your soliloquy. She thinks on her feet and would rather you didn't have any.

Weaknesses:

Ohm...y God: Her body is magnetic and unstable. At all times, Schatz is overheating from her skin trying to tear itself apart in every direction and rapidly settling in an infinite cycle. While this feeling isn't painful in itself, it bars her from wearing too much clothing for fear of heat exhaustion. This heat is less prominent in the extremities and a raging fire in Schatz's core.

Doc, Everything Burns: Just because her wounds close immediately does not mean that she doesn't feel pain; in fact, she's more likely to pass out due to shock than most people. Also, her skin is so frictional with itself that it cauterizes--that alone should suggest the level of pain Schatz deals with.

Need for Speed: Schatz derives an obscene amount of pleasure from adrenaline. She will, more often than not, do very stupid and dangerous things for the sake of the high.

Fucking Magnets: Schatz can't use guns. Because of her magnetic nature, flimsily made firearms tend to come apart in her hands and the better-made guns never seem to fire right. In fact, she has trouble using most things without simple moving parts; even her automobiles are dumbed down terribly for the sake of her abilities.

Keep in mind that this is all pretty off-the-cuff, so feel free to pick out things you don't think'll fly.

The Dust: Relaunch

Just thought I'd drop by and say 'yeah fuck it I'm in.'

I'll have a sheet toot sweet.

Devil's Storm

@The Wanderer

Bryn padded at her eyepatch in mock horror, wrapping both hands around it and snapping it for effect.

"Oh god, I'm blind! And--holy shit, I've lost a leg!" She bellowed, words dripping with sarcasm. Rolling forward from her terribly uncomfortable seat on one of the shelves behind the bar, Bryn bounded over the counter and out towards the off-tempo series of gunshots. She took a moment to look at her handiwork--a litter of demons, all riddled with bullet holes, save the fresh one that'd seated its head in one of the chairs. A whistle and a tap offered Conrad a playful 'zap' on the thigh, Skelter rolling between Bryn's dexterous fingers.

"Nah, I'm just fucking with you. These're old. Obviously. What corny comic shat you out, anyway? You look like you died-but-got-better and now you're out for revenge." Bryn cackled at her own impression of an 'extreme' announcer, a talent she'd appropriated from listening to too many radio soaps. She took the time to study the cowboy-looking character, trying to get a read on him.

Two holsters, far's she could tell. Big guns, from the sound they'd made, but certainly nothing like that could've made a pit in a demon and-or saloon wall like that. Something on him was inscribed. Was it one of the guns? She'd have to wait for the reload. Big black stick. Big, pointy, metal black stick. This guy was a walking armory. He even had a belt full of bullets, just... Sitting there. His guns were high caliber--those bullets were thick. Had to be .44. Bullets were never cheap.

Disposable income, for sure. Whoever the Lone Ranger here was, he had pocket change or a leatherworker in his pocket. His cape... Thing, Bryn didn't know the proper term--it had some nice yellow embroidering. Unless this was his only change of clothes, this guy had some jingle and more than enough of it to go around, seeing how much he was willing to spend on his outings. Looked somewhere between young and old--thirties, certainly. He'd been doing this for a while, it appeared. If he wasn't rich, he was certainly a looter. Too many bullets on hand and too many nice things.

Of course, Bryn's definition of rich wasn't the most accurate: considering she'd been sleeping on hay and a sheet for the past week and paying for the pleasure, not having to piss in public was the epitome of fortune.

Two shots. Quick, classy chkk-brap-brrap. Safety was off and the awning had two new holes in it. Bryn was much for conversation, but from the looks of this guy, he wasn't. Looked moody. Type to talk with his guns. Pulling the demons rather than letting them wander towards them left little room for surprises on their end--they were still on the outskirts, and the saloon was wall-to-wall with two other buildings. No back attacks. Any demons that cared to jump down her ass would have by now--and by Bryn's summation, the pack of five were probably lollygagging in the other two shops before they grouped up.

"Hey, Leather'R'Us. Back to mine, got it? You know how this goes. Shit goes south, we bail different directions, stretch the demons thin and ease back into the fray. You've done this before, so I'm not going to give you the whole spiel on 'don't look at your gun looking at the landscape look at the landscape' n' so on. Brynnet Schene, by the way. You're going to call me Bryn." She tapped her back, offering it to her new cohort. The tie she'd made for her leg was already getting soaked.

"Watch the gimp leg. I got gored by a railing. Spook threw it. I'm good to move. Not like there's any muscle beneath the knee." Bryn explained with trained brevity--her sentences were almost rhythmic, short and sweet. A cigarette rasp filled the gap between the last two statements, reminding Bryn that she needed to quit--just as soon as she had enough money to buy another pack. Come down easy. Very, very easy.

"You got a name there, Skippy? Because I can't keep calling you various euphemisms for 'Some leather-clad asshole with two legs and a dumb hat.'"