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1 mo ago
Current i hear dies irae bells ringing in my ossicles every time i claw from the dirt and peer wistfully through the rpg tomb doors thinking, "one last job..." another bony finger of the monkey's paw curls up
3 yrs ago
i can't believe it's already christmas today
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4 yrs ago
*skeletal hand emerges from an unmarked grave* the drive thru forgot my side order
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4 yrs ago
Imagine having an opinion on rpg dot com
4 yrs ago
Let’s play a game where you try to sext me and I call the police
1 like

Bio

Maybe the real plot was the friends we made along the way. [Last Updated: April 3, 2022]


I'm 26 years old and I have learned not to share too much of my personal life on the internet. I work as an English and writing tutor at a local college.

I love literature and poetry, and I also enjoy writing, and I like to think I'm not half bad at it. I first started writing as a hobby with online roleplay at the start of 2010, and I've slowly drifted away from it in recent years. I enjoy most genres, but if I had to pick a couple of favorites, they would be sci-fi and high fantasy—heavy emphasis on the high fantasy. Some of my favorite characters have come from Elder Scrolls roleplays, since it appeals to the D&D nerd in me.

I have a tendency to get carried away with making my character sheets. I like telling their stories in the sheet sometimes even more than the roleplay itself, which depends on the roleplay itself of course. I want my readers to know how their background influences them as a person, how their personality bleeds into their appearance, and I love watching characters overcome their personal tragedies and finding their true selves as their identities shatter and reform like kintsugi. I've always been a fan of characters overcoming their weaknesses and obstacles and I try to make that show in many of my characters. Therefore, many of the narratives I explore come from a place of vulnerability, but I try to balance the heavy themes with light whimsy.

I also try to research whatever it is I'm writing about so that I'm not just spitting into the wind - unless that's what my character is doing, in which case I try to make sure that's made clear in my writing. It’s kind of hard to define my style, as I’m influenced by all sorts of literary movements and schools of criticism; dark romanticism, modernism, post-modernism, Marxism, feminism, post-structuralism—I have a lot of isms in my pocket. Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of my favorite dark romantic authors, Dickinson is one of my favorite naturalist poets, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Langston Hughes, and Robert Frost—they’ve all in some ways informed my writing, as well as many others. I even tend to look to some of my fellow guild mates for inspiration or analyze what I like about their writing and see what I can do to improve my own through their example.




Prime Rib Boneheads
@Dragonbud
@Luminous Beings
@Maxx
@Shin Ghost Note
@JunkMail
Calcium Supplements
@megatrash
@ML
Rest in peace, @Polymorpheus
@SepticGentleman
@Byrd Man
@Skai
@Heat
@Chuuya
@Enarr
@Tiger


These Tickle My Funny Bone
You can find me in:

Currently in no roleplays.

Most Recent Posts


<PARTY COLLABORATION>



All across the deck of the Phoenix, her passengers scurried and made themselves busy to make her space-ready. The engineer and his helper tinkered and toyed as they made sure the drive and engines were warmed up and operational, patting themselves on the back for a job well done. The pilots on the bridge tested their systems and played their music, while the droid co-pilot swiveled around on the actuator in its waist and blinked one of its photoreceptors to face Baarsuth and give him a thumbs-up and a wink. The others downstairs were preoccupied with their own matters and squaring away business where it was needed. The vessel was alive and bustling with activity. From the outside, the pilots' activities could be seen as they exercised the spoilers, ailerons, the rudder, and warming up the stabilizers, maneuvering jets, and the attitude and lateral thrusters. Heat distorted the light as the repulsorlifts began whirring – any minute now, the Phoenix would be ready to take off.

The sound of static buzzed across the ship, until the sound of Zekha's familiar voice blared across the separate decks, "Attention crew; it's your engineer speaking. Our brave and noble vessel is prepared for departure from a mechanical standpoint. The bridge is yours, captain, take us to the inky voids of space and to a land of cheap liquor and women if you would."

The speakers crackled a bit, before a different voice began to speak, one which belonged to the apathetic twi'lek mercenary who the crew had met in the cargo bay, “Pilots, set a course for his mother's house.”

“Ah, I do miss home cooking.”

Crackling ensued once again as the agitated voice of the captain came alive through the speakers, “Keep the ship's channel clean of gabbin’. Baarsuth, Bo – make preparations for take off. Engage inertial compensators and artificial gravity generators. Light up the afterburners.”

B-0 listened to the chatter over the intercom with quite a bit of confusion. Were they really charting a course for a place with cheap liquor and women? If that was the case why would they not stay on Alderaan? But wait...now they are going to the captains mother's house? That seemed like a strange choice as well. B-0 certainly wasn't a creation built for jokes or sarcasm, luckily she was only the co-pilot on this trip. So it came as a relief to the droid when the captain came over the speakers, giving real instructions.

Baarsuth sprung into action. His hands flew across the control panels as if the ship were his. While he turned on the ship’s artificial gravity and engaged the inertial compensators, B-0 activated the navigational software.
The droid worked efficiently. Her arms reaching across the controls in front of her while her head swiveled, taking in the various meters above them. After a few moments of button pressing and toggle...toggling...B-0 turned to face Baarsuth. She let out a series of beeps and trills that could loosely be translated as: Let's do this thing. Baarsuth smiled and turned the music up. A new song was playing, one with a thrashing, tank-like guitar that almost sounded like an engine revving. The music player’s screen revealed the song was “Hyperdrive” by Starfleet Cru. Baarsuth’s hands rested on the primary controls, his finger hovering just above the button to engage the thrusters.

A few moments later, Zekha was entering the cockpit, looking around for any obvious deficiencies. Other than the general wear and tear of such an old heap, it wasn’t a death trap, so that much was comforting. “So, droid, who made you?” he asked, climbing up onto the back of B-0’s seat to get a better look at the bird-like head of the co-pilot. “What is your function?”

“Stop distractin’ my droid, Zekha,” Baarsuth shouted, glaring at the engineer. “We’re workin’ here.”

“It’s a droid. Droids don’t get distracted, isn’t that right pal? You can process information faster than our squishy brains ever could. Don’t let Baarsuth tell you you aren’t better than him in every conceivable way.” Zekha retorted conspiratorially towards B-0.

B-0 had tried to ignore Zekha's pestering. She was trying to work, and the sooner they got this ship off the ground the sooner she could continue her search for the Force. He had asked her some, frankly, personal questions. She did not want to give him the satisfaction of an answer, that was what he wanted her to do. She tried to get back to work, her motors whirling a little louder than before. It only got worse as Baarsuth joined in.

Droid. Droid. My Droid. Droid.

She suddenly slammed one of her metallic hands onto the control console, dragging her hand off of it with a grating screech.

"Bo." She said. Her voice remained jittery and robotic, her facial expression permanently neutral, but her body language read irritation.

The ship lurched a tad, catching everyone slightly off guard, and Shai especially as she was climbing the flight of stairs up towards the bridge, but she managed to keep her footing when she lunged for a tight deathgrip on the handrails beside her. She felt a large hand that was suddenly and firmly set against her back.

“Careful now,” the crew could hear the captain say from behind her, “if this piece of junk has got one thing going for her, it's her afterburners. They're practically brand new since the old ones were blasted off. They've got enough kick to them in just warming up to make the Phoenix jump on her landing gear.”

As the two stepped onto the bridge, Varen gave an appraising look over the bickering crew surrounding with an unsympathetic countenance. With a sigh he grumbled, “Among all of us fleshy sacks of shit, Bo is the only one who was built for space travel and won’t blow up like a bloody balloon inside a vacuum. Can you brats please not piss them off? Baarsuth, start taking us up.”

“Aye, cap’n.”

“Where’s Liak’ykam?”

Liak’ykam had been taking her tour of the ship’s mess hall, which was a rather flattering term for a glorified pantry. The cooking equipment was pretty minimal, and most of it quite foreign to Liak’ykam. Fortunately, despite the Basic she did not know how to read, the majority of it seemed fairly intuitive. It had been quite some time since she had prepared food - truly prepared food, with proper materials and everything. She chuckled at herself, at the feeling of giddiness she got looking over the different spices (labels were useless; she identified them far more easily by smell) and the various foodstuffs. Most of it smelled synthetic, factory-made, the exact opposite of what food could be. Perhaps this is for the metal one. There was a supply of real ingredients, and not nutri-paste or something equally abominable. If it wasn’t too much of a bother, she might ask the Captain Varen Kray to stop at the next spaceport and pick up some actual food. Surely they could barter something worthwhile for it, and she was certain everyone would feel better and do their jobs better with Wookiee-sized portions to sustain them.

Liak’ykam took her hood off for a moment, feeling a bit warm in the cramped kitchen. She supposed if the next planet had wildlife - and she certainly hoped it did - she could go hunting while the others did whatever it was they were doing. As she perused the various stores, attempting to plan some sort of fresh, coherent cuisine from the mismatch of ingredients designed to last until the heat-death of the universe, she felt an itching of sorts. She could not hear the Captain Varen Kray ask, “Where’s Liak’ykam?” from the bridge - could she? She heard it in her ears, like an echo from far away, and in the pull of her feet in that direction. Liak’ykam thought she felt something deeper, as well, something like a tarentatek waking from slumber, but she could pay that no mind. Liak’ykam walked onto the bridge, feet falling silently even for such a large Wookiee, her walking stick held gently in her hand, as the Captain finished asking where she was.

“Here, Captain Varen Kray,” her translator warbled. She placed her hood back up and gave them all a polite nod of the head. The ship rumbled to life beneath them and Liak’ykam - for a moment of childlike panic - braced herself against the wall, steadying herself with her walking stick as the afterburners thrusted them forwards. She chuckled. “Forgive me,” she said, smiling. “This is my second flight. What do you need for me to do…? “ she almost called him little one, because the Captain Varen Kray was quite small, and so young, too, but she did not think he would appreciate that on his ship. The other young ones had been fighting. Nothing serious, like kath pups snapping at each others’ legs, but fighting nonetheless.

The pilots took the ship up, B-O and Barsuuth handling the controls with practiced ease. Under Kray’s watch, they input the coordinates as they took the slow route out of the atmosphere, building up speed as they broke the pull of gravity and hit open space. The coordinates for Tatoooine were punched in, the ship lurched, and rocked, then made the jump to lightspeed. Liak’ykam braced herself against the wall with one hand and with the walking stick in her other, feeling the rush of speed low in her stomach.




The ship dropped out of lightspeed and Tatooine was there in the distance, a brown desert hanging in empty space. They’d come in at the edge of the system as the captain preferred - it was better to arrive with a little room for maneuvering, should something less hospitable than a welcoming party ever be waiting for them. Varen Kray looked over his pilots idly, everything on the Phoenix having worked just as it should -

Then the comm system burst with static for a moment, drawing their attention. It warbled, the connection weak, then finally came through. The pilots adjusted the controls for a moment, attempting to get a stronger lock on the signal. It repeated itself every few seconds, a short burst set on automatic repeat. It wasn’t far away from where they were.

“A distress signal,” the captain said. He nodded to the intercom and told Barsuuth, “Get everyone up here to the bridge. We have matters to discuss.”

Following Barsuuth’s relay, the crew assembled in the bridge. It was cramped and they were slightly too close to one another for comfort and the distress signal kept repeating automatically. “Nothing discernible or special,” the captain announced. “A standard distress call, just far enough from Tatooine that their port officials wouldn’t pick up on it. Anyone jumping right to lightspeed out the docks might miss it as well. No telling how long it’s been going.”

“Is it just me or is that distress signal getting closer?” Woo’rah commented sardonically, glancing toward the captain with a knowing look. “Maybe they’re politely informing us they’re coming to kill us all.

Liak’ykam stayed quiet - it was not her place to speak in affairs of which she knew little. The taller hairless one seemed quite convinced it was a trap. Liak’ykam was in agreement - she had seen it before, in Kashyyyk, when they recorded the screams of the little children to lure them away from the village. She drummed her fingers against the walking stick, limbering them up. At the same time, she did not know how these distress signals worked. Perhaps it was legitimate. If they were looking to prey on those who would help others, they might deserve justice. Perhaps it was not their place. She stayed quiet and listened.

DM Collaboration: <SHAI RIVELIA>


"I came all the way just to inspect this ship." Shai said with the hint of smile on her face, gesturing with the dataslate she had been given.

“Look at that, a sense of humor. I never would have thought.” Woo’rah bemused, idly chewing on her chewstim.

After a moment of thought, Shai said, “Would you mind if I stayed here for now? It's so... crowded up there. Everyone talks too much.”

“Now you know why I'd rather spend my free time down here.” She replied matter-of-factly. “Fine by me if you're as much a fan of small talk as I am.”

“I should have brought my own hammock.” Shai responded dryly as she searched around the cargo hold for a place that looked comfortable enough to withstand the roughness of takeoff. “Maybe the Captain will let me move my bunk down here.”

“I doubt it. Varen likes to keep his crew with the rest of his crew. You’ve heard it before: the crew comes first.” The other twi’lek threw her hands up melodramatically. “Crew this, crew that - it gets repetitive and boring, but credits be damned if he isn’t gonna treat you lot like his own stinking family. He’s good people. Even if he doesn’t like showing it.”

“Besides, the captain knows I like my space.” She continued, and then she leaned in a little closer to Shai and with a smirk she says, “He also knows he needs a place to keep all the dangerous spacers and mercenaries like me away from his darling little crew. Just in case.”

As close as Woo’rah was to her, Shai didn’t notice until just now that there were at least one or two teeth behind the escort’s lips that looked as though they were sharpened.

“Please,” Shai mused as she took a step back and pushed two crates together, forming a makeshift bed, “you don’t look that dangerous to me. Looks can be deceiving though.” The smaller twi’lek added with a sly smile as she scooted her ‘bed’ into the corner of the cargo hold and climbed on top of it. “Either way, I’ll try to stay out of your lekku while I’m down here.” the Twi’lek Exile finished, before pushing her own lekku onto her chest and putting her hood over her eyes.

“Be glad I’m not being paid to kill you, then.” She responded, her dull eyes lighting up for a moment until--

“Woo’rah.” A gravelly voice snarled from behind. The mercenary whipped around to see Captain Kray standing not too far behind her with an irritated and disapproving look on his face. That face then turned to look at Shai, and he said, “Miss Rivelia, a moment of your time in my cabin, if you would. At once.”

The captain turned around and marched through a door not too far away from the pair of twi’leks on the bow-starboard section of the cargo bay.

Woo’rah sighed and sat back at her work station, propping her feet on a strange-looking case of opaque flexiglass. With no effort made to hide her sarcasm, she said, “Time to pack your bags already? Shame. I was looking forward to being pestered some more.”

Shai heard the Captain’s voice and hopped to attention out of habit, her hood still over her head. “Aye sir, I’ll be there in a moment.” The smaller twi’lek answered in a neutral tone. What could he need? Had she done something wrong? After the Captain had excused himself from the room, Shai relaxed and gave a half salute-half wave to Woo’rah, “Oh, I won’t leave you that easily. Try not to miss me too much.” Shai Rivelia pushed her hood back and followed the Captain into his cabin.

“We don’t have much time left before take off, so I’m going to make this quick.” Shai heard as soon as she stepped through the door. Looking up, the captain’s face looked grave and his eyes were staring daggers into her. She also found herself in what looked to be an office, except the office also had a heavy arsenal that was mounted upon the walls.

“I don’t know where you came from, and frankly I don’t care. But that is the last time I want to see that blasted device, do ya hear? I won’t have myself any rotten war following my crew and I around the galaxy. There’s only one side anyone is allowed to take on this ship, and that side is the Phoenix. Do I make myself clear?”

Shai stood ramrod straight, eyes fixed perfectly ahead, face blank. She had been dressed down like this in the past. This was not new to her. The reason, of course, was. Usually it was her Sith betters doing the reproaching. Not her being reproached for being a Sith. Well it was not exactly that, but the Captain didn’t seem to care if she was a Sith or a Jedi. Not too surprising. Shai Rivelia had noticed throughout her travels that many hated anyone who used a lightsaber no matter which side they were on. Not that she used one anymore. The weapon was dead. Just like the Sith who wielded it.

“Crystal, sir.” the twi’lek responded, her voice betraying nothing of her inner turmoil.

“Convince me.”

“Sir?” Shai responded, slightly confused and tensing up. What was he asking her to do? Destroy the rest of the blade in front of him? She couldn’t. It was one of her only possessions. To lose it… Would be to lose the last part of her past. She felt her whole body tense up at the thought. The past hurt to hold on to, but sometimes we hold on to things that hurt us. Or maybe it was impossible to let go completely. The twi’lek didn’t know the answer.

“I’ll give you time to figure out how,” the captain said, “you’ll have until we land on Tatooine.”
Granted, it would have been fun to watch everyone get smoked out of the Phoenix had I decided that Zekha couldn't find the defect. 😉
Yeah, sorry for not giving you much. I just had to put something down. Maybe you and @Dervish could cook something up together?
@Dragonbud@Dervish@He Who Walks Behind@Amaranth@Maxx

Now what did I say? I said a couple days, and it's been a couple days. Ask and you shall receive!

Some notes:
  • I did a bit of editing to the OP to make it look a little cleaner and easier to understand.
    • This includes changes to the Carrying Capacity secondary stat. Instead of measuring it by pounds, we're doing it by kilograms as the Star Wars universe does. This makes for an easier time trying to figure out our weight. Now 1 Power = 5kg and 1 Fitness = 2.5kg. As a reminder, Carrying Capacity only governs being able to perform actions with a certain amount of weight. Your total capacity would be 150% of your CC. Be sure to make some of those edits on your sheet in the character tab for future reference.
  • I also created a group Discord chat for us should you wish to use it. PM for details!

<B-0> and <BAARSUTH>


Player interaction? You two have got this in the bag. For the record, <B-0>: even if the music is a little hokey... it's kinda lit.

By the way, you two still need to do your own rounds and checklists.



Oh yeah, there's nothing to worry about. <B-0>'s analysis of the unfamiliar piloting panel was able to quickly and ably guide <BAARSUTH> through the process as well. Everything looks crystal clear from bridge. Lock-threat warning system looks good, stabilizers were in the green, and though the target tracker was kind of spotty, the micro-maneuvering controls were beautiful. The only peculiar thing worth noticing was the fact that there were multiple telesponders that were hidden in obscure locations on the bridge, and you doubt you found them all. Normally a ship would only need one, since all it did was automatically transmit the ship's identification profile to starports and military vessels.


<LIAK'YKAM> and <ZEKHA>


You know what I say when the characters have to perform a new or possibly challenging task? It's roll time.


Between the technophilic misanthrope and a tribal elder who thought star ships made great pottery for wroshyr trees, the two of you managed to take care of things pretty well as far as pre-flight checklists go. <LIAK'YKAM>, you did as you were told and followed those directions diligently. While you might not have much if any knowledge of star ships at your disposal, you certainly aren't a stupid wookie. Some things your dug partner had you do were self-explanatory: make sure the needles don't go into the red, make sure nothing bright was flashing, make sure that nothing loud was banging. The last might've been a little trickier, given the hum of the hyperdrive, but so far nothing sounded like there was a terentatek on board the Phoenix. That only thing you might have found of note was the fact that some wiring was protruding from a panel of the... you don't know what it is, but you figure that <ZEKHA> could probably tell you. Speaking of...

<ZEKHA>, admittedly you found it slightly more challenging a task than you anticipated it to be, but that could also very well be the case of working with worn-down and dated equipment. Stuff so old that you might have forgotten had existed and had to take a minute to remember how to operate them, so you might have made a mental note to obtain a newer model of the power outlay differentiator and the alluvial dampers for the hyperdrive. One particular thing of note you found was an issue with a heated solenoid for the fuel reversal system that fed fuel to the ship from two individual tanks. You know from your experience that it has two purposes: the first is how firing from one side and then the other helps with the center of balance of the ship so that one tank doesn't get much heavier than the other. The second purpose is to keep any one engine from getting too hot. When a reversal is happening, combustion air is also reversed. One valve closes while the other one opens, and the valve that closes directs the exhaust through a flush vent and into space where it doesn't suffocate and kill the crew. The bad solenoid controlled combustion air. For you, it was a simple fix of replacing the wiring of the solenoid's coil, but you also know that it's often the simple fixes that kept exhaust from flooding the ship and slowly killing everyone on board. Nice job.



<SHAI RIVELLIA>


When <ZEKHA> sent you off with the duty to perform the pre-flight checklists, the job itself was mostly simple. There were a few things with a box next to it that you were supposed to indicate with a check mark or the letter x, and some of those things might have included whether or not certain cooling units were running properly, if loose objects were either secured or put away, any loose panels or missing equipment - then there were other fields such as whether the coupling motivator was giving you the correct readings or if the condition of the hyperwave emissions enhancement filter was good. Such things were far and away from your responsibilities on the last ship you were on. As you proceeded into the cargo bay, Woo'rah wasn't where you remembered her being. The hammock was empty, but you did hear some noise coming from the same curtained off workbench where you originally met her at.

Labored sounds of a woman came from behind the welding curtains which was followed by the scraping of heavy equipment being moved around as a metal-against-metal type of hammering sound, like someone had just dropped or thrown something somewhere, finally prompted a sigh. Almost dramatically, the welding curtains were thrown aside and Woo'rah walked out with a bead of sweat on her forehead. Most of the stuff in the cargo-bay looked like it was tucked away, secured, or stored somewhere, which could very well mean that the sole denizen of this bay was hard at work since the crew left. She looked around for a moment, apparently glossing over <SHAI RIVELLIA> entirely, like she was trying to see if she had missed anything of importance. That was until you began speaking to her directly.

"We're getting ready for departure, is all your stuff squared away down here?"

Woo'rah looked at you for a moment as though she didn't notice you standing there at all, then shrugged and said simply, "For the most part."

The taller twi'lek waltzed around the curtained-off work bench taking a good look at all corners of the cargo bay before making her way back around the other side, apparently satisfied with the job she's done and made a beeline back towards you.

"Was that it, missie?" Woo'rah asked, with the same sort of smug-albeit-bored expression on her face. "The sweet little thing was just coming in to check up on me?"

You hadn't stood directly next to her before, and now the height difference was actually clear: she stood over a foot taller than you and her musculature seemed a little more defined. She seemed to find some amusement out of this face as she literally looked down at you with her hands on her hips; though you got the sense it was more from the absurdity of the height disparity between you instead of it being a taunting gesture. As if fully anticipating your agitation, she just smiled for a brief moment, not giving you a chance to respond to her before she continued.

"What is such a shy little munchkin doing out in the bantha's end of space, anyway?"

Now that part was definitely her teasing you, but you didn't need the Force to tell you that.
If RPG allowed me to "love" posts with a little heart emoji, I would punch that button in a heartbeat. Everyone's posts have been fantastic! I'm looking forward to see where this goes, and hope I get the privilege of writing with you all in the future.

I did finish the revisions on my sheet should that time come, and I'll keep it posted here for future reference.

Let me know if anything needs work! I'm mostly just psyched I was able to squeeze this out in the time I had.

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