The Harbinger of Ferocity

The Twenty-Fifth Hour

If the party intends to have a Discord they may but my intent is to keep this straight forward on the forum. However, a notice to all, in the future please construct sentences as previously described in the interest check, of medium complexity at most, and not to exceed three in total. "Bullet" style answers or any post which has greater than three sentences will be ignored. If you do not wish something to be in-character for your post, post it outside of quotes and in italics but keep it relevant to the game and not out-of-character chatter; I suspect some might want to write more but that context will not have an impact in itself.

The Twenty-Fifth Hour

@Polybius @Pyromaniacwolf @DocRock @Voltus_Ventus

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Prelude

"When you call out into the emptiness, you find that it is either you that has not made a sound or it is this place that did not carry it. Instead there exists only the uncanny expanse, which in itself is devoid of even the faintest of sound, being made up of deafening silence. Perhaps here this is a place without, for as you attempt to find yourself, you find that you are without too. Nothing comes of the wandering thought to search your own person, which twists only more strange as you attempt to drive to action the feeling for the seeming surface below you. Not only is there nothing there, for while you may think, it appears you cannot so much as do."

"Seemingly cast into the ether, it is becoming more troubling that you are not but your own thoughts. Which leads you back to the questions you grasped for earlier, fumbling with these fundamentals. You remember not your name just as you do not your figure or features. All of them presumably consumed by the depths, leading to you here in the shallows with the eerie tide of fog. It becomes more urgent yet again to discern these essential aspects of yourself or like flotsam they, you, might disappear altogether."

The Twenty-Fifth Hour

All parties should be aware that the game has begun.

The Twenty-Fifth Hour

The Twenty-Fifth Hour

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Method

The Twenty-Fifth Hour is a roleplaying topic that operates by having any one of the party members, so long as they do not do so twice in a row, post a brief set of reactions and actions. They are limited to three mildly complex sentences and receive input from the Game Master. This style emulates in many ways classical text-based roleplaying games of old, where player input was limited and important, especially when in event sensitive context.

The game operates with a sense of control fully derived from the players' actions and decisions. There are few, if any, set plot elements and the only guiding compass is the ever evolving dialogue, which at most is two to three complex paragraphs from the Game Master describing the world. Within it, an underlying tone of horror pervades, but all else is freely available to their whims. This freedom comes with a price as well, for failure will almost certainly mean defeat and death for the character. The goal is, simply put, to arrange a functional narrative and direction between them all and to survive.

Record

This section shall in due time contain a record of important events in annotated form. It will serve as a registry of anything considered relevant to the character and the players.

Prelude
You arrived in the unknown, a realm of unreal and real. You have discovered that in this place you are no more than your thoughts and even those are fleeting. No element of your person is any longer clear. Are you dreaming these extensions of self or is that how they have always been? You must piece together who you are and who you will become. As fate would have it that you discover yourself to be a burly sailor, trapped beneath the waves. From your would-be prison in the depths, you swim to the world of the waking.

Chapter I
There you discover that you are a castaway upon an island, where a fire on the horizon rains ash. After assessing yourself, you realize you are very much alive, narrowly. From there, you discover a chest and ominous writings in them. Browsing the remaining papers, a strange feeling of belonging confronts you and you decide to take one. You pluck from the collection not the burgundy, emerald, sapphire, or ebon book, but the ivory. After, you discover that seemingly all of the texts are illegible but the one you opted for. You have then wandered the beach and discovered a piece of scrap metal, what appears to be hull, that could be used for shelter. You then debated with yourself about venturing into the jungle but decided against it until daylight comes. From there, you began to feel a strange pull in a particular direction for no overt reason when attempting to comb the beach. In that period you found some wood debris that you set to dry, along with some added clothing you found with a sack. You then chose to sleep for the night, haunted by your questions of the past when you awoke the next morning.

After asking some questions to your nature of how you arrived to the accursed island, you came to realize something terrible was at stake and had set in motion your sailing, but whatever it was horrified you and was blocked from memory. Thankfully, with daybreak aiding you, you packed up your few goods and shook the thought of the unknown, finding a strange trinket in the form of a silver ring upon a silver necklace while stowing your goods in the rucksack. Thinking it of good fortune, you pocketed the mysterious piece after admiring its charm and set about heading inland, pouring over the thoughts you have about the mysterious text before realizing it is becoming much more humid.

Players

These players are the only persons currently permitted to make valid attempts for actions:
@Pyromaniacwolf @DocRock @Dusksong

The Twenty-Fifth Hour

The Twenty-Fifth Hour

@Polybius @Dark Light @Pyromaniacwolf @DocRock @Voltus_Ventus

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Prelude

"The plunge into the deep dark settled within your soul a sense of innate loss. It tore from you any semblance of direction, those literal and metaphorical, and left you agasp for air. No amount of struggling would shrug off the inky black, so down and down, deeper did you sink, until you settled upon the bottom. Your feet under you at last, the weight of the hopeless endeavor became crushing. Would you, could you escape this place? No matter what you thought in that moment, your fleeting eyes scoured the darkness in hope that you might. But there was and would clearly be nothing here. Just you and the darkness, here together. Nothing to be witnessed for a glimpse of hope."

"Yet in this wake, where dreams did live, came a fog rolling in from the seeming void far beyond thought. It crept upon silent feet, hugging low to the bed, until it too overtook you; perhaps this itself was as dreadful as the descent or a welcome reprieve from infinite depth. But with phantasmal caress did it free that voiceless inner terror and although the invisible bonds were broken, the world of this place without places was no less a prison. Still you existed in this plane which stretched beyond ken, surrounded by a shroud in the shallows. This moment of reprieve in the face of the unknown was all it took for you to regain composure, if ever briefly; the staggering, infinite loneliness was driven off for a brief time."

"So with a chord of rational thought returned, you were left to puzzle the obvious. Where were you? What led you here? Where was so much as here? Such a line of inquiry begged stranger questions still, the first of which was a primal reflection; that of the self. Some shred of it surely existed, could it not? Who were you? The thought bit back, as though it stung to sift through so many fragmented pieces as the stormed just out of reach. Yet there was nowhere else to start, at least not yet. They would need be parted through if there was to be any hope of escape, assuming there would even be."

The Twenty-Fifth Hour

Maybe instead of a death race to be the first to post we can set up a rotation? Or all reach a consensus about what we went the character to do before one of us posts it? Or just have a death race?

@Voltus_Ventus

The rotation is whoever posted last may not post again to determine actions until at least one other member has posted. If the players outside the game reach a consensus or agreement, that is their doing, but there is no obligation to do so. The only obligation that exists is that one does not attempt to retroactively alter the continuity or change it; that would be an example of an invalid post. One of the goals of playing the game in this manner is that players should want to post and not dawdle.

This single character thing is a bad idea... I’m just still here for the train wreck :p

@Dark Light

One of the core ideas of the game is to make it different and keep it in the spirit of the archetype, wherein there was one character and one life. The players, unless they wish to lose, need sort it out for themselves and or respect the narrative forming rather than trying to push their own individual agendas.

The Twenty-Fifth Hour

@Dark Light, @Pyromaniacwolf, @DocRock, @Voltus_Ventus, then it is settled. The game can be expected to begin tomorrow, in which case all will be mentioned again as four is a solid enough number to start. Recall, there should be strong emphasis to post, as the first post received by the Game Master will always be accepted unless invalid or if that person was the last to have replied with the course of actions. As well, the start is the portion where the narrative is the most likely to be set in stone, so being vigilant and ready to respond helps shape the narrative more toward one's own desires.

Persistent Characters vs "One-and-Done" Characters

One of the fundamental issues experienced with creating a new character for every topic is the rate at which threads are prone to turnover, at least in this age of roleplaying where this instance appears more common than not. It becomes an exercise in tediousness, that each and every time there is a reasonable chance of a character that was strongly desired to be played that they will become irrelevant in short order. As no real progress or anything of merit will be done with them before the topic is likely to capsize and now said character is shelved, potentially indefinitely. So I believe it is not exactly possible to not make disposable characters when that is the new norm.

For me, this practice not only rubs the fur the wrong way and irks me to no end - I come from the days when people were one character and were associated almost exclusively with that character - as it is effectively a waste of time. Why so? If one goes through all the trouble of making a character they wish to play but the topic is likely to die, that investment of intellectual and creative energy is going to be mostly spent. Some elements of that character via the inner desire to manifest them may still linger and be repurposed, but in the end the majority of what was done becomes just words on a screen at that point, devoid of anything of value; not much connection was really to be had unless the author struck gold for themselves in developing that character, which is of course rare. Personally, I am fatigued with creating characters and trying to make each one new, novel, and distinct when I rarely will ever have the chance of playing them for longer than a few weeks. Owing to this, I would prefer to have just one, perhaps two at absolute most again, and commit to them here.

All in all, it is reasonably for the best to make a few general templates of characters who can stand-in for various genres with only a minor amount of alteration, as it is more courteous to make characters who fit into topics rather than just wedge one's ongoing characters in without canon appropriate changes. Again, speaking only for myself, I wish more did this and at such a point I myself am likely to resign to this standard given the issue of turnover, @Mistiel. No complaints to be had here if you choose to do so and I hope that more follow.

D&D 5e - Hoard of the Dragon Queen

The attack on the huntsman as he shifted into place on the other side of the trap threw him for a moment from his routine, as it came from behind. Instinctively, with barely contained restraint, he wheeled around and was set to strike back, only for the young priestess to be full of shock and apology, the poison making her woozy and clouded in thought. The reactionary measure and barely stayed swing of the sword's bite delayed him further, only to be struck by a stone cast by the kobolds. It really them more than anything that redirected the menacing ire but by now they were already prepared for a fight. Owing to this, the incoherent attack and lack of true surprise made the weapon far easier to avoid as the man closed the distance, putting himself among the scaly fiends.

What was not easier for them was that their slings were not nearly as useful in close combat and that they would need make a choice between them and their other weapons scattered about. Or better yet, if they fled. Brannor had no qualms about felling the leading edge of the two-handed blade down atop them if they so much as turned for a break and escape. They were not worth the consideration, not after all they had done in service to this dragon-queen and with the added misfortune that mercy was not the strongest of suits to test with the wilder.

Effects

Brannor closes the distance to the enemies, being on the other side of the trap, then makes an attack against one of the kobolds with his greatsword, rolling an 8 to hit. If an enemy provokes an attack of opportunity, he will take the attack against the first provoking target.

@Hekazu@Ryonara@Zverda@Lucius Cypher@Norschtalen

The Twenty-Fifth Hour

@Pyromaniacwolf

Still interested although I'm curious as to what the exact setting of the RP will be?

The exact setting will be determined by the players, depending upon what is done once the game is initiated. By virtue, this makes the start of the game extremely important and quickly sets the tone and direction. The two most major paths it can take is toward fantasy or science fiction but it may branch into other elements. That is purely up to the decisions and actions - or lack thereof - from the players.

And the way this has been described makes it seem as though all the players are in control of the same character, which is completely fine by me I just want to make sure My sleep deprived mind isn't reading it wrong.

You are correct, all players are in control of one singular character. There is only one main character. All other characters, if any, are under the assumption of the Game Master who controls them as individual entities. This is to prevent the narrative from splintering into a thousand directions when presented with what amounts to grand levels of free will, limited only by where one falls in posting order.

Part of me is liking the potential of this turning into a kind of weird meta horror where the character becomes aware they're being dragged around on different directions by different individual forces but I'm not sure that's exactly the desired theme here.

This outcome is entirely possible based upon decisions taken by the party. It is not out of the question that the character starts to realize they are being pulled in many directions. However, there is truly no telling or knowing just where the narrative may go.