STATUS:
Sad to say I'm currently experiencing Writer's Block. Luckily I learned Writer's Kung Fu and I can chop the block in half with my hands like Bruce Lee
9 mos ago
Current
Sad to say I'm currently experiencing Writer's Block. Luckily I learned Writer's Kung Fu and I can chop the block in half with my hands like Bruce Lee
8
likes
11 mos ago
Why is the sun like bread? It rises in the yeast, and sets in the waist. Haha! Isn't that so cute? Join my RP or more puns will come.
8
likes
12 mos ago
What's the difference between a Hollywood actor and a piece of driftwood? One is Justin Timberlake. The other is timber, just in a lake. Hahathisiswhati'mdoinginsteadofwriting
4
likes
1 yr ago
Hey, folks: I've just kicked off an RP, a fantasy where you can worldbuild as much as you can adventure. So if, like me, you like worldbuilding nearly as much as writing, check out Pilgrim's Caravan
1
like
3 yrs ago
That moment when losing a character in a rougelike makes you want to shed tears. No backup. It's gone.
Hey y'all. I've been at this for about 10 years, and I've played a lot of kinds of RP. I like fantasy and sci-fi the most, just because they give me the most to play around with, but I'm cool with almost anything. I just like writing.
(I'm also trying to slowly break into writing as a profession, but apparently that's not enough work for me, so I'm here too. I'm starting to think this place is just where I get out all my bad ideas)
Race, Age, Time in the Caravan: Human, 37, 8 years in the Caravan
Appearance: At 37, Athulwin looks older than he should. He knows it. People already take him to be in his forties, early fifties, with the lines around the mouth and that star-silver hair. It used to be blonde, he swears. He thinks himself lucky to be on the tall side. His back, stomach and most of his lower body is marked up with faded old burn scars, like stretched-thin fabric. Up above them, between the shoulder blades, are dozens of thin, white stripes- ancient whip-scars.
History:
Vampires of the Old Marshes rarely take prey. They are like their marshland home: calm, silent creatures, who do not often lust for blood. Nor does the sun much bother them, if they can stay to the twilight hours. An Old Marshes vampire can often be sighted lurking at sunset, sunrise, unbothered by the half-light. And though they are masters of powerful and cruel Curses, they do little magic besides. They are only true vampires in that they can neither eat nor die- for they are not among the living- and that sometimes, on bright nights when the midnight moon speaks to them, they do crave the Red Drink.
On a very clear night, that craving awoke in one Gareth of Queensrock, a man who died twelve months earlier and was still trying to live like he hadn't. He had fought off his new, awful desire for blood as long as he could, distracted himself from it with anything he could think of; but still, the part of him that was now a vampire demanded satiation. It took over him as tried to lay in bed with his human wife, Renalda, one night. She was pregnant, he didn't want to drain her, but the craving-
Three days before Athulwin was due to be born, his mother Renalda stabbed through his father Gareth's heart. She had awoke just as he had gone for her neck.
He was buried that night, in an empty funeral attended only by Renalda and three Uttering Monks. The monks did not know him; their order considers it a duty to arrive for the funerals of the unloved. At least someone, they say, should mark the end of a life. They closed Gareth's eyes and lowered him into the soaking, marshland earth. Renalda wept. Then they begin to talk to her, and revealed another purpose in their coming: that they knew Athulwin would be born a half-vampire, would carry some of his father's curse all his life with none of his power.
A wretched existence, they said. No life at all, they said. But the Uttering Monks, in their dark, private monasteries, know a great many strange things, they assured Renalda, for they spend their days speaking fire and their nights talking to the stars. They knew of a ritual to cure him. Her son would be a man- not half of a man, not an almost vampire, but a whole and mortal and pure man, accepted in the eyes of the world. Their price was only this: that he would be their man. That soon as he was old enough to be weaned off of his mother's breast, she would give her firstborn son to them, and they would raise him in their monastery according to their own traditions.
An awful trade? No doubt. But... Renalda was a widow twice over, with no craft of her own. In a village the size of a bloated thumb. Her nightmares were already filling with fears on how she could possibly care for this son-to-come so, with tears, she agreed. They sealed the promise in the way men of the Old Marshes do, by carving it in stone. A small but heavy stone was stuck, struck deeply, with ancient symbols to represent that weighty price. Renalda has it in her home to this day.
The sun rose and set two more times; Athulwin came into the world. He was a boy born into fire. Literally: the ritual of the Uttering Monks, to cleanse a child of vampirism, was to set a pyre burning, and to let the child be birthed right onto the flames. The child would not burn alive, a nun named Sister Alyn promised Renalda, for the monk's sisters too can speak to fire, and they will teach the flames how to only burn away that which is evil in her young son. His self will be untouched.
It was a half-truth; the burn scars Athulwin still has testify to that. But it calmed her enough to let the monks and nuns do what was needed. The infant screamed. It was a dark scene. We should not dwell on this subject-
Suffice to say, Renalda's baby was alive, all human, left to her until such a time as he could be weaned safely. Came and went. Athulwin was taken up into the Monastery at Queensrock before he was old enough to remember his mother. There he was raised, there is where he thinks of when he hears someone ask him about home. Those stone walls, those cramped passageways.
The aura of an Uttering Monks monastery is hard to describe. They are one of three monastic orders native to the Old Marshland, a land already filled with history and deep tradition. They are the oldest of the orders- and the strictest. Silence is kept at meal time, silence for the first hour after waking, silence for the first three hours before bed. All the space between is filled with a deep, growl-like muttering: the sound of the monks practicing their art. In a monastery of a hundred souls, like Queensrock's was, every corridor and common room and walled-in garden is filled with men's muttering, so that it bounces off the stones and becomes the background noise of the entire monastery. It is a bit like the sound of a distant ocean or a dying fire. It'll get into your bones.
They aren't speaking to each other, of course, of course. They'd raise their voices for that. They are speaking, if you can believe it, to the raw elements of nature: the sacred art of the Uttering Monks is to learn the natural languages of things like stone, wind, thunder and fire, and to spend their lives practicing those strange tongues. In the meantime, they study much philosophy, much history, much religion, so that they form the spiritual and academic backbone of Old Marshes culture. Everyone outside those dark walls was uneducated, agricultural- but within them? There shown all the knowledge of the greater world.
This academia was learned before magic, for new students; by the age of four, Athulwin was already reciting religious history, between his dragging classes on writing, reading, languages. There was little arithmetic, and that was the one thing to be grateful for.
Many long years would pass this way. So many so that it would be better not to cover them all. One pattern emerged: Athulwin was a brilliant pupil, but only when he applied himself. He did not, as a rule, apply himself. Sister Alyn joked that they should have told the flames to burn out all his laziness, too. Nobody guessed at the true cause. It was that same thing which caused his straw pillow to come to the cleaners wet with tears, which caused other children to complain that he never laughed along with them. Young Athulwin had the condition which the people of Sinverland might have called "chronic melancholia," or what other cultures in other places might have deemed Depression- but what was here, in the Monastery at Queensrock, just a stark lack of work ethic.
He was flogged often.
It was perhaps inherited from his mother; it did not improve with age. He would've been outcast from the order altogether, if it weren't for his saving grace: Athulwin truly is a prodigy with languages. Monks learn mortal languages before magical ones, to prepare the mind. It was with an uncharacteristic eagerness that he tackled the words of the Wandering Elves, the rumblings of the Forrestal Dwarves, and the odd language of the Eld Fae- fairy folks who lived in the Old Marshes before humanity drove them out. He'd only been required to learn one.
Soon, with the blessing of the order, he was speaking to the stars. Now when he went wandering the swamps alone at night, he had a good excuse to be doing it.
And that was how he met Alder.
Alder, a man who only seemed to live at night and twilight. He appeared out of the fog to speak to the young monk whenever the swamp was dark and lonely- he claimed to be a Lord, but one without any land, and claimed that he had known Athulwin's father.
Athulwin knew he was a vampire. Alder knew that Athulwin knew, but why he kept coming out so late for conversations with a blood-sucker- that was the mystery. Still, they talked. The night hours were passed together. Alder never once tried to drink from him. It became a kind of unspoken alliance, this secret friendship between a vampire and a monk.
Their friendship formed over common interests. Language, history, philosophy. Alder always knew more than he should; it made you wonder how old he was. Athulwin learned secrets from the stars- he tried to impress Alder with them. Years passed, and they knew everything about one another.
Uttering Monks will temporarily take Vows of Silence, to meditate on the natural elements. Alder bore that time with patience, filling the air with only his words, while the dutiful monk nodded along. Something about the chatter made Athulwin's constant sorrow part, if only for a while. Time would be passed the same way as he prepared himself to learn to speak to fire, then to wind. He was becoming a true Sayer.
Alder asked often how his studies came. In the times where he was not shackled by a vow, Athulwin answered, never wondering why his friend would ask so much. It only became clear when, on a clear night with the moon swaying over their words, Alder made his proposal.
He wanted Athulwin to become a vampire, like his father, and of the same clan. It made sense now why he would play so long at friendship; vampires cannot participate in the monastery, so none ever learn Utterance except by turning a monk, and learning it from them. He promised Athulwin a very high position in the clan, for his part.
But he, perhaps drawing on something of his mother, was repulsed. He spat at the suggestion, almost literally. He demanded that the vampire unhand him- for he had now grabbed him by the wrist, and was tugging him closer. The moon was singing to Alder, he was going to turn him, he would try to drink from him as Gareth had tried from his mother, and-
In rare cases, a gifted Sayer who speaks the language of fire can go further than only talking to fire; they can breathe fire, like a fairytale dragon. That's what Athulwin did then. For the first time. Alder was left with half his body burnt from the flames; he staggered backwards. He wasn't dead, thankfully- but then Athulwin heard the words that would change his life.
Alder, with that kind of bitter, dripping rage that only vampires have, pronounced a Curse on Athulwin. The words of the spell were not in any tongue men could recognize. Hearing it felt like a hearing Utterance in reverse, upside-down; there was nothing natural about it. And though it was incomprehensible and unnatural, Athulwin found that he instinctively knew what it meant: that he was cursed to die. That the sorrow and sadness which has always been inside him would gradually work its way outwards, graying his hair and aging him too fast, working in him until it rotted his bones and brought him to a young death.
There was a possible release from this curse- if he would become a vampire. If he would one day embrace the gift Alder tried to give him, the Curse would break. Until then, he was doomed to grow weaker, and weaker, and then die.
With those words ringing in his skull, he fled.
The next two years at the monastery passed too slowly. Every day, it seemed, Athulwin found another gray hair in his head, felt his body seeming a little heavier even as he lost weight. He knew what was taking hold. One day, without warning, he ran for good from the monastery, leaving his vows behind him. It was an impulse decision, probably the only one he's ever made. All he knew- that he had to see the world before his ended.
That was how he found the Caravan. He has stayed for eight years, never knowing how long he has left before Alder's curse finally comes due. With his power to speak to the stars, he's become the official navigator, and so a kind of leader. It put more responsibility on him, more than he would normally like, but he doesn't altogether mind. It lets him leave a mark. Before the Curse comes due.
Personality: Still and calm. A contemplator. A hearer, not a talker.
Through his long time in the Caravan, Athulwin has gained a reputation as someone you come to when you need someone to talk to. He is the one who will actually listen to you speak, pouring out whatever is on your mind, and only answer back once you've said all you need. He'll look you in the eye, tilt his head towards you; he really cares. And, a true Uttering Monk, his words back towards you are chosen carefully, with a surgical kind of precision. A habit coming from the Vows of Silence that he once held. Words are precious.
When he's not charting out the Caravan's next course or hearing out caravanners problems, Athulwin is usually somewhere silent, deep in meditation or reading or simply thinking. There is a flaw here: he almost never helps with the physical work of the caravan. Nobody has ever seen him chop wood. Maybe it's because of weakness from his curse, some say. Or maybe got used to trying to skip out on work back in the monasteries, and avoiding it like the plague became a habit.
Motivation: What is he looking for, life? But he's given up on that. Instead, Athulwin most wants to seek knowledge before his death. Not knowledge of the world, of things. But spiritual wisdom. All this journeying is only a path to that greater goal. He hopes that, by experiencing and seeing all that creation is filled with, he can glimpse something of the hand of the creator.
Skills, Strengths and Weaknesses, and Tools:
Skills:
Utterance has been described as a kind of cross-breed between druidism and elemental magic. It is a form of language, allowing one to speak (literally, with their voices) to the non-living aspects of nature, like stone, or sunlight. The obvious use for such a power would be to control natural elements; to tell a fire to cook or to burn down, to teach ice to freeze itself around a threat, to call on rain for the crops. It can do those things, though not so often or effectively as a true wizard might. (Reason being: the elements can say "no" to one using Utterance.)
Instead, the main reason the Uttering Monks study it is for learning from nature. Nature, after all, witnesses and knows many things mankind does not. One who speaks to the stars may learn from them the correct paths to travel, may hear of ancient history those stars' eyes have seen, may be told of great and secret things that happen in the heavens. Those who whisper to the wind may hear it whisper back, telling them of news from far-off lands, of secrets said in a king's chambers while the window was open and the night breeze whistling by. They cannot control the elements with the same precision as a mage, maybe, but a Sayer (that is, one who practices Utterance) knows far more.
And this learning goes deeper than head-knowledge, too. Finally, a Sayer has an Aura. Their Aura is based on the elements of nature they most often speak too, because as you commune with something such as fire, you will find that burning power seeping into your own soul. The Aura a Sayer has is felt almost tangibly around them, and heard in their voice, giving most of them a kind of unnatural charisma. One who speaks to stone seems strong and unbreakable, one who speaks to ice becomes coldly intellectual. All of them feel impossible to argue with. A good Sayer tends to get their way in conversations. Their voice carries much weight.
As a last note: Utterance isn't one language, it's many. Each part of nature speaks its own tongue, after its own form. All these things have a secret language; twilight, shadows, thunder, time. But these tongues are not like the languages of men, that anyone can learn them if they just study enough. They are stranger.
Take the language of the stars, for one example: to hear it spoken feels like fire, like a burning light, full of wisdom and cold fury. It feels like you're hearing something from another world, something straight from the cold void of space. It is so much more than just sounds. So when someone speaks it, they do indeed form actual words with their tongue, but there's something deeper happening that everyone who hears it can sense.
That's no accident. Before one can speak the language of, say, water, they must spend months or years in silent and intense meditation, learning to think like water. The same goes for any other natural language. Someone who wishes to speak to the wind must think as quick and surely as the wind. And during this time, the student must take a vow of total silence; they cannot speak a word in any language, even an ordinary one. This can take much focus. Only after a long time has passed is the student ready for a proper Sayer-Teacher to be brought in, who will finally show them the real words and syntax of the language that they wished to learn. After that, their vow of silence can be broken, and it becomes like learning any mortal language.
Each natural language is different, so this process has to be repeated for every Utterance one learns. You may already know how to speak to lightning, but if you want to speak to thunder, you still have to go back and start your meditations from scratch. So only the very old or very dedicated can know more than a few Utterance languages.
Athulwin is a Sayer; one who uses Utterance. Specifically, he speaks the languages of Fire, Wind and Starlight.
Starlight teaches him many things, though it has no use beyond that. As it says above, "one who speaks to the stars may learn from them the correct paths to travel, may hear of ancient history those stars' eyes have seen, may be told of great and secret things that happen in the heavens." He uses this knowledge to aide the Caravan on its journey, keeping them away from places where the stars speak of danger. The knowledge is not always perfect; stars are not like you and me, and their words are like riddles born from an alien's mind. Much of what Athulwin hears from them has to be... interpreted.
Fire is an opposite to starlight, having little to say but much it can do. There's not a lot a fire can tell you; its spirit, if it has one, cares for nothing but to burn. But then, that is the use. Speaking fire is good for a fight, good for removing obstacle's in the caravan's path, or even just good for cooking a meal and warming you on cold nights. Like many Sayers who have spoken this tongue a long time, Athulwin is not harmed by fire, and can breathe it as a dragon does.
Wind is somewhere between the two, having some practical use and sharing some knowledge. A Sayer can speak wind to push things and people out of the way, or speed sail-boats along. It can also carry messages across long distances, so that Athulwin is able to speak something into the wind, and another Pilgrim will hear it a mile off as clear as if he were standing beside them. Among the people of the Old Marshes, the language of the wind is associated with spy-work, because of the way Sayers use it to hear other people speaking from far away. In the Marsh, they say never to speak a secret when the wind is blowing, because it will carry your precious words to a Sayer, who might turn and use it against you. Before the Pilgrimage visits a new city, Athulwin will always stop to listen, to hear what sort of people live there- and to guess if the Caravan will be welcomed.
Outside of Utterance, Athulwin has little physical or practical skills, and relies on his charisma to get through situations that can't be burned or blown away.
Strengths: Knowledgeable: A strong knowledge of philosophy, history, geography and- of course- theology was drilled into Athulwin from a young age, and his own caravan has as many books and scrolls as it can practically store. He also hears news via the wind, and receives cryptic messages and esoteric knowledge from the words of the stars. Unnatural Charisma: Although not the most outgoing fellow on his own, Athulwin's connection to the raw elements of the world gives him a constant feeling of power and authority that clings to him. His tongue is as if it's enchanted; he gets his way in conversations even when his words are plain. Fights with Fire and Wind: Although not a pyromancer in the arcane sense, Athulwin's connection to fire allows him to control it. He can walk through fire with only moderate pain, wrap himself within flames like a cloak, and command fireballs to leap at foes. But, unlike a true wizard, he cannot summon flames from nothing, except for when he breathes them. So before a fight, you'll likely see Athulwin spit fire onto his own hands, and command the flames out from there; and this is still painful for him. He can also push the bad guys around with gusts of wind, or hover himself a few feet over the ground.
Weaknesses: Cursed: The Curse that is on Athulwin makes him age faster, and makes his body both weak and heavy. He is very frail. To boot, one who has lived long under a curse such as this one has a way of becoming more vulnerable to dark energies. Foul magics and other curses hurt him even more than they would hurt others, and he can resist them less. Impractical: Athulwin scorns physical labor, both because of his weakness and because of his own personality, and he rarely cares for the day-to-day necessities of life. If he had to fully look after himself for a month, he'd be a beggar by the second week. His head is always in the clouds, you might say. Or, as it were, in the stars. Melancholic, Impersonal: Few things bring joy to Athulwin. Even those things that should make a man happy can scarcely bring a smile to his face, and this impacts his relationships with others. He is hard to befriend. And, because of the impractical mindset mentioned above, he doesn't care to talk about 'ordinary' things with ordinary people. All conversations with him somehow end up being about magic and nature and the gods, or else they end up being about nothing at all. He has few friends among the less educated of the caravan, who cannot follow his meandering thoughts.
Tools: -Maps, quills and scrolls, various cartography equipment -The Eld Breviary, a book of chants that focus the mind before Utterance. -The Moiling Chain. A heavy, iron chain given to Uttering Monks who serve in a monastery for ten years, reminding them of the weight and burden of their holy duty. It is enchanted never to rust, and each link is engraved with shockingly detailed images of religious history. In a pinch, it can be used as a whip.
What They Most Want: Wisdom. Knowledge. Insight.
If They Had a DnD Alignment, It Would Be: Lawful Neutral.
Three Likes: Utterance, wisdom, crisp air that clears the mind.
Three Dislikes: Dark and occult magics, those who live without a code, and vampires.
Do They Follow Their Heart or Their Mind?: He used to follow his heart. But somewhere, in all those silent and contemplative years in the monastery, re-reading scriptures and philosophical texts again and again and again for new interpretations, the mind took dominance.
Worst Fear: That he will break, and become a vampire.
Favorite Color: Silver.
Most Like The Animal: Raven.
Favorite Time of Day: Deep dusk, when the stars are just coming out, and the last rays of sunlight sinking down below the horizon.
How They Dress: Back home, a brown robe was the standard. Sometimes spruced up with a small hat, or- for festivals and other such rare occasions- a necklace.
But after eight years of travel, Athulwin keeps a variety of clothes stuffed into his caravan, ready for most any environment. He's learned that, when he has the choice, he likes softer and neutral colors: grays, off-whites, almost-blacks. It goes with his hair. Robes, cloaks and other flowy, wizard-y fare is the usual ensemble.
Favorite Season: Winter. Crisp air, chill wind, early sunset.
What Gods/Spirits/Whatevers They Worship (If Any): The Uttering Monks, and those marshlanders whose villages are sprinkled amidst their monasteries, worship the ancient god Eld Frowen. They teach that it was him who Spoke all things into being at the beginning of time, and their practice of Utterance is but a pale imitation of that great act. Eld Frowen sits in the Unseeable Throne at the center of the earth, far underneath the sunlit lands, and He is still Speaking today. Every word that He says keeps the world in motion, keeps the sun rising every morning and breath in our lungs. All the universe is like a story told by Eld Frowen. (In fact, Uttering Monks often call the world of Alwyne "The Great Story.")
Other gods and deities are seen as Echoes of Eld Frowen's words, which form when the words He says echo off the walls of the great cavern that is his throne room, being changed and distorted in the process. So, in Authwin's eyes, every other god is an echo or a perversion of something Eld Frowen once said. He tries to keep that opinion to himself.
In art, Eld Frowen is often depicted as half man, half fae, and either blind or eyeless. Blind, because the monks teach that He is a bit of an absent creator, "an unmovable mover," who keeps the universe in motion but does not otherwise interfere in people's lives or the events of history. In a sense, He is a god both blind and deaf, neither watching over the world nor much hearing prayers- only speaking His great story, ad perpetuam.
Terilu
Ascendant of the Third Caste and Called by the Reaching Hand, in Form of Baítudatu-Thumilie, of New Dawnlit
Race, Age, Time in the Caravan: Eratie, Nineteen, Two Weeks in the Caravan.
The Eratie are considered a beastrace: humanoid creatures that bear some of the features of animals, or else (depending on who you ask) animals that speak and walk on two legs. For Eratie, the animal they take after is undeniably the bat. They have all the expected features: chiropteran faces ending in a snout, with dark eyes for seeing at night, black and light fur covering their bodies, and huge ears for picking up on echolocation. And, of course, there's that huge set of huge leathery wings sprouting from their shoulders- hard to miss that one.
At least, that's the stereotypical Eratie. The way an Eratie looks varies much depending not upon their genetics, but upon the mystical energies in the air when they are born. An Eratie may or may not be born with wings; they may or may not have fur; their faces may resemble that of a common fruit bat, or may be more that of an ugly Natalidae. It varies by the stars that are overhead, and by the poorly understood Powers that swirl around them when first they come into this world. Even the time of day plays a role: Eratie born at the stroke midnight often have tiefling-esque horns. They call these variations in their bodies their "Forms," and as they are a people who categorize everything, they of course have a name for each. The most common form is the one they call "Baítudatu-Thumilie," and that is the stereotypical one described above.
Most of the world population of Eratie exists in the land of Tureiamú, which is considered their homeland: it is a small peninsula that stretches out somewhere south of the lands of the Old Marshes and Trist, almost approaching towards the coastal kingdom of Ordos. But, historically, the Eratie who live there have had little traffick or trade with the humans, who they consider a brutish and dangerous bunch, and their culture shows this. Over thousands of years living in the same places and rarely varying their way of life, the Eratie-Tureiamú have been built into a complex, strict culture that prioritizes tradition and orderly behavior. Their caste system is enforced, and unquestioned. Their houses and clans are maintained by blood and by ritual. The lives of those who are born under Tureiamú's sun are set out both by the station of their birth and by their astrological signs. Even the shoes that an Eratie puts on in the morning may as well have been pre-planned according to three thousand years of tradition. Who is there to argue with it?
Each Eratie is meant to behave after their own kind, after all, following their destiny as their Form, Calling and House would dictate it, and this is the only way. Those who break from their destinies are shamed or outcasts. They have walked the Unsteady Path, that winding road which leads to decay, and cannot be made clean again.
Appearance:
Terilu is a rather common kind of bat, and this has always irked him. He wishes that he had the horns of the Detiastu-Tiatietu Form, something all dark and imposing to frighten the bigger races. But, alas, he does not. He is in every way what the human imagines when he thinks of an Eratie: something small, maybe three or four feet tall, with a cute fruit bat's face. His fur's all black except for a ring of brown around his shoulders, worn just like you'd wear a scarf.
His eyes are young, and full of burning potential.
History:
Terilu's path to necromancy began with a plague. He was less than eight years of age, and some vile disease was sweeping through New Dawnlit- the stone, crumbling old city where he was raised.
Like most Eratie, the young Terilu was living deep within a crowded "nest-" a single massive home where dozens of Eratie (all of the same caste, of course) reside communally under one roof- when the sickness began. In a normal year, a nest is meant to be a warm, busy place, where every child has as many mothers as there are women, and has as many fathers as there are men.
All the children of the same age were Terilu's nest-siblings, and he shared meals and jokes and conversation with them all throughout the nights. All in the nest were related, all of the honorable Third Caste, and this made them as good as brothers and sisters. Each of them would be one day trained in the approved professions for ones such as they: meaning that for most of them, they would have educated, upper-middle class jobs. The Third Caste was considered the caste of the artists, the writers, the scribes, the wizards, the architects, the scientists; the thinkers and the feelers of their world. Young Terilu and his nest-siblings were lesser gentry, the lower part of the aristocracy- wealthy and privileged, though not in charge.
But, in a year like this, with this strange plague in the city, their crowded nest became a vector of disease.
The women of the nest, the mothers, were struck the hardest. Nobody understood why. The disease made them shrivel and rot, losing weight while they vomited up their meals. It was rabidly infectious; a nest that caught the plague could be hollowed out in a matter of weeks. It killed fast, and that was the only mercy. The first to fall in Terilu's nest was an old woman he knew as Mother Deatta. As is Eratie custom, the nests' many children were brought in to see the body- to say their last goodbyes.
Little Terilu looked down at the Mother's corpse. Staring at this skull-like face, shrunken down to nothing by this starving, blind plague, the young child was struck with something. He was too young and not bright enough to articulate just what he was feeling, but suddenly he was aware that this is how all life ends. Plague or no plague. He was understanding for the first time, that this is what will eventually happen to the rest of his mothers, and to his fathers, and his friends, and then to him. They will all one day be like the body laying on the table.
Tears rolled down his face. They thought he was crying for Mother Deatta. He wasn't.
It was the next morning that he declared to everyone in the nest, with the confidence that only children have of the future, that he was going to become a powerful necromancer. This, he said, was his chosen path. The nests' elders did not much question it. Necromancy was indeed an acceptable profession for the Third Caste by the ancient laws of their people, and the child had certainly seen enough death in his life that it was no great mystery why his mind should be on this track. They assented. The lad was to be trained in the ways of undeath. When the disease had passed from the city, they assured him that they'd search for proper tutors and dig up the proper spellscrolls for his study.
But the plague, meanwhile, tore on through the nest like a flame through paper. Half of them died, especially the mothers. Terilu almost became numb to all the funerals, to watching his sisters and teachers and mothers pass away. Until six months later, he lost the one- Mother Terria.
Mother Terria was his birth-giver: the very one he came from. Unlike the other women of the nest, he came out of her. That made her death feel... different. When the messenger boy came sprinting through the narrow, long little stone halls of the nest to tell him that she'd died, he began to shout and scream. He isn't even sure if the shout was one of grief or anger. He could not distinguish which emotion this was. It was simply wrong: wrong for another one, and this one, of all, to be taken from him. He cursed and he spit, something that would've gotten him in real trouble if the wrong adult overheard. (The messenger boy, in sympathy, swore himself to silence.) He declared aloud to a room of fellow mourners, when they took him to see her body, that he'd see her rise again. By the necromantic power that he was going to learn. Nobody took it seriously- he hadn't even been trained yet- but the uncomfortable silence that followed was real enough.
It was later that afternoon when he found out that the nests' elders were having the corpse cremated. There would be no resurrecting her.
Little Terilu was heartbroken, and confused. He thought this move a random, mean injustice to him, and to his mother. Only later did one of the fathers sit him down and explain. There's no real bringing someone back from the dead, he told him. The dead rise when a necromancer tells them to, yes, but it's not the whole person. It's either just the body, hollow and rotting, or just the soul, ethereal and tormented. Either way, there is no having Mother Terria back, whole and healthy and herself. That time has now passed.
It nearly killed young Terilu's desire to become a necromancer, hearing that. But changing course is extraordinarily hard in the uncompromising Eratie culture. Already his name has been marked down as a future necromancer. Already, here come the tutors assigned to teach him this sacred art, and here are the relatives bringing gifts of dried bones for their favorite youngling to practice on. The many mothers and fathers of Terilu's nest forbid him from changing course. It would be embarrassing for the family. So he continued.
His first tutor in the art of necromancy was an old, wrinkled bat named Master Earídu, a fellow member of the Third Caste but who came from some far-off nest in a city that Terilu had never heard of.
The lad instantly disliked him. He never appreciated the young lad's jokes and jests, for one thing. Just looked at him with that ancient face. "He looks as much like a dead body as the ones he brings back," young Terilu said to his friends. It was funny, because resurrecting the dead seems to be the one thing the aged necromancer was unable to teach. Terilu has many blurry memories of long hours wasted listening to Master Earídu talk about the theory and philosophies behind necromancy. There was much he had to say about the symbolic meaning of a person who is kept both alive and dead, and why this is important to their culture. When he didn't feel like talking (that was rare, but did- occasionally- happen), he'd sentence Terilu to many long nights of drawing out body charts and complicated diagrams of rituals. He'd review the drawings, mark where Terilu had made a mistake, and send him back to rework the entire thing.
But only rarely would he let the young pupil put any of this into practice. Perhaps it was because of the Master's failing health: he was nearing sixty, an incredible age for an Eratie, and seemed to have no more energy for real spellcraft. The grave was drawing near to him. During a particularly dry lecture on the nature of arcane energies, he once lamented aloud that he wished he had learned more when he'd been Terilu's age. Then, maybe, he could've ascended into something like lichdom, and kept himself alive for centuries more, as some few of the greatest Third Caste necromancers indeed have.
Terilu whined to him that he wouldn't achieve lichdom either- or anything else- if he wasn't shown some real magic soon, but the master would not hear of it. When he predictably died of old age some five years later, Terilu felt more annoyed about it than anything else. This dotting academic had wasted his entire education! In a fit of irritation, he snuck into the Mausoleum with a necromantic spellbook snuck under his arm, and found where they had buried the master.
He probably would have failed if, ironically, it weren't for the excellent theory and form he'd learned from all those lessons. Dragging out the man's casket with both hands, he cast the most powerful Resurrection Spell he could find on Earídu's own corpse. And it rose to life as his slave. Laughing with genuine delight, he made Earidu's body dance and juggle for him. It was the first thing he'd ever brought to life bigger than a rabbit! It was the eve of his 13th birthday.
And that is, of course, the age of adulthood for Eratie.
He decided now that the Art of Necromancy really was the path for him. If, for no other reason, so that he could escape the fate of so many others in his young life: so that he could use this dark power to stop himself from dying. He wouldn't allow himself to just be another funeral. But he had also decided that his homeland was not the place to learn. The necromancers here were all like Earídu: academic scholars concerned with getting their names on books, not with achieving real things. He is utterly repulsed by them.
So it was that he had many tearful goodbyes with his family and friends. The now adult bat was going to venture out into the "Wilder World," as Eratie called the savage universe outside their safe little peninsula of culture and knowledge. His mothers were convinced he would get himself killed. There, they warned him, necromancy was hated as an evil and black art, and any who discovered what he was would murder him. But no, he reassured them: he would follow the rumors of wicked necromancers in distant lands until he came upon one himself, and there he would beg to be their apprentice. He would learn all they had to teach. If he came back, it would not be in a casket, but as a lord of the dead. Powerful, wise, and ascendent.
It took three years of hard, long travelling and searching, but he did find his teacher. She was an elven woman, Aryyna. Oh, he loved her. She was the opposite of the old bat. The image of a classic necromancer, complete with an undead army and plans to conquer the world. Sensing the presence of her many undead servants from afar off, he had tracked her to her hideout in an abandoned watchtower mounted just at the mouth of a bloody and forsaken old battlefield. Many wars were fought in that land in ages long past and, cleverly, she was raising the corpses that had fallen in battle to build an army of her very own. She was preparing herself for an all-out invasion against the local villages- there was some petty grievance that she had against them; Terilu didn't care what it was. When she saw that he was ready to serve her no matter the cost, Arynna gladly took him under her wing. It helped that he proved to be rather magically gifted. He learned from her how to raise skeletons and ghouls to follow one into battle, and how to seek wisdom from the spirits of those long gone. In time, he was the lieutenant of her dark forces. Just her, him, and a few hundred sword-wielding corpses.
He stayed with her for several more years. It was, he would have to say, the most valuable time of his life. There is nothing like being shown the tricks of the trade by a true expert. He never came close to her power, but she assisted him where he was lacking. She helped him create an undead slave to bathe him every morning and clothe him every night. She had the ghouls bring him wine on a platter. She showed him how one communicates with the undead telepathically, only thinking and having your will accomplished. He could soon sit on the balcony of the tower and watch the dead go out to war at his unspoken command, raiding the villages by night until the powerless peasants were forced to offer tribute. He and her took the very best of their goods: their wines and fabrics, clothes and foodstuffs, their gold and oil. He felt like a warlord.
He was lonely, that was the only thing. In his crowded nest back home, he never wanted for company, and so he never realized how much he relied on it. But now Terilu was beginning to know himself better. He looked back with fondness on the many hours of conversation that he had with his nest-siblings, and the ways that they laughed at his jokes. He tried conversing with Arynna, but she was cold. And her dead weren't for talking.
But he could have continued in this way. Being the second-in-command. He still could have kept on until they conquered a small kingdom's worth, gladly, even though the occasional bloodshed made him chafe. He did not know he could be a killer- but then, it wasn't him doing the killing, he told himself. And the villagers were only hurt if they fought back. Nobody made them fight back, he told himself. And his magic was growing so much! And so, still, he would have continued. But, alas.
He found Aryyna dead one night at the hands of an assassin. To this day, Terilu still doesn't know exactly who it was who did it, or how they got past her undead guards. The best guess: that someone from the villages climbed in through the window. The assassin killed her while she was in the bath, whoever it was. They got a knife in her throat before she could rise to throw a spell at him, or call for help. Even the greatest mage can be taken down by someone quick and suicidal enough.
The blood ran down her body turned the bathwaters red. It reminded Terilu, in a funny sort of way, like wine. It was a disgusting comparison, but that's what it looked like. He's not sure how long he spent looking at her body. He felt grief, of a kind, but it wasn't only that. His steady life here had just been pulled out from under him. Without her, he knew with a sinking feeling in his gut, he wasn't strong enough to keep command of the undead servants. He was not a true master, not yet. Most of the undead soldiers would just crumble apart, becoming immobile corpses again. But some of them, the ones who did not just return to the grave...
With only a few bags of needful things strapped around himself, he fled. He flew out the window, escaping from the old tower before the dead could realize that his magical hold on them was gone. He did not want to discover what kind of vengeance they could bring onto him. For all he knows, they still haunt that old battlefield, restless.
He joined the Caravan not long after. At first, it was just to lay low for a while. With the Caravan's endless roving, it's a place where anyone who knows his recent past as a necromancer's apprentice might have trouble finding him. But after only a few days aboard, he realized that he's going to stay. It's not just that it's the perfect hiding spot. It's that... well, he was lonely under Arynna, and the Caravan has many souls. He's dearly missed belonging to a nest.
Plus, its adventures give him many opportunities to practice his magic. If he is to be as accomplished as his beloved teacher one day, he needs practice.
Personality:
Bubbly. Humorous. Outgoing, bright and immature.
Were these the words you were expecting?
It has seemed strange to many of those who have known Terilu that he seems so... unbothered. So completely unbothered. He does not have the spirit you would expect of a necromancer. There is no edge to him. Or if there is, it's so deep inside that one can rarely find it. He flies down to you with a smile, ready to jest and talk about nothing at all. For him, conversation is a great pleasure in and of itself.
He does tend to show that more aristocratic side of himself: he takes most everything for granted, and gently assumes the service of those around him. The kind who will get the room to laugh with a joke, and then make you the butt of his next joke, and never consider that it could have hurt you. If you held a grudge about it, he'd be genuinely shocked. He's just a rich, laughing boy. He likes having power, and he likes it when people do what he says; but he also likes company, the thing he was most lacking under Arynna's tutelage.
So you wouldn't think that he practices a school of magic as stereotypically dark as he does. That's probably because, in Terilu's mind, it isn't dark. The other necromancers that Terilu previously studied under were all of a kind: brooding, crushed, and weighted down with hate. Of the world, of their victims, of- at least a little- themselves. But there is no such guilt on Terilu's conscience. He sees his form of necromancy as being perfectly fine, after all, and he's still quite young and energetic, so he maintains something of the charisma of a puppy dog even while he may blackly defile the rotting bodies of the dead. Why should they care, anyway? They're dead already.
Perhaps due to his dark nature, he also has an unfortunate love of puns.
Motivation: Impatient from a lack of progress under his many tutors, and believing there is no more he can learn from the lectures of old men, Terilu has turned to the Caravan. He does not imagine there is anyone in such a place who can teach him necromancy- but then, he has learned all the theory that he can stomach. The young bat now seeks to gain experience. To put his knowledge into practice, and to hone his power by using it. To do that, he reasons, one must live.
Skills, Strengths and Weaknesses, and Tools:
Strengths:
Bat Traits: As a winged, bat-esque creature, Terilu can fly, has excellent vision in the dark, and- when vision proves not enough- uses echolocation. The echolocation is too high for human hearing, but another Eratie (or anything else with above-average hearing) can pick up on it, making for a kind of secret signal. Eratie talk in ultrasonic sounds when they don't want the lesser races overhearing them.
Necromancy: This one is obvious. Terilu can raise the dead, and bend them to his own will. He can sense and communicate with any undead, even if they aren't his, and he can take command of the weaker-willed ones. He knows how to reach beyond the veil, tampering and communicating with the souls of those who have left their mortal coils, to various ends. If he's pulled into a fight, he can rip and tear at his enemies' soul, torturing it with dark magic. He can even try to pull a soul wholly away from a person's body, capturing their disembodied spirit as his servant and living their body a husk.
Aspiring Lich: Although he still has a very long way to go, Terilu has begun learning how to become a form of lich. He has a connection to the forces of undeath that lets him sometimes act as if he were already a corpse himself: he can stop breathing for a while when he needs to, and survive things that should kill a living creature because, in a sense, he is not fully a living creature anymore. He's partially on his path to lichdom. As a rule of thumb: if an undead could do it, Terilu might be able to as well.
Weaknesses:
Bat Traits: It's not all good being a bat. He's half-blind during the day, when his nocturnal eyes can't adjust to the sunlight. But most people would've guessed that much. No, the real disadvantage is actually his body type. He's made for flying, but getting a humanoid form off the ground is no easy feat. An Eratie is therefore incredibly small and light. He's only 3 and a half feet tall, his bones are hollow, his whole form is designed to be as weightless as it can possibly be. It's shocking how little he weighs: coming in at only 35 pounds on the scale. He's therefore weaker than a human child, and if any strong man so much as shoves him, he'd go flying. Literally!
Prejudiced: In spite of his studies under a bright elf, and though he has made the acquaintance of many races through his journeys across the Wilder World, Terilu has always found them all to be very simple compared to the shining order and complexity of his own people. Anything non-Eratie is a bit of a barbarian in his mind. They're too often unlettered, backwards, and ignorant of deeper truths. He's (pleasantly) surprised when a human can read.
Dark Connections: Terilu counts his brand of necromancy as, if not ethical, at least Not So Bad. He avoids torturing souls and tries to avoid harming innocents. Nonetheless, he touches on many dark magics and things that very much are bad, and it's impossible to escape the consequences of messing with these forces. He's been tainted by it. Magics meant to drive out evil creatures, demons and undead and the like, bother him more than they rightfully should. He is a little beacon for evil things. There are abominations from beyond the veil who know his name.
Tools: Aside from basic survival, living and cooking supplies, Terilu has a special collection of prizes given to him by his family, before the outset of his journey. Most of them are a little magic, to be sure, but the real benefit is that they keep him from forgetting his true home, and his true purpose.
Mother Terria's Ring: A silver ring he stole out of his natural mother's urn after her passing. He fished it right out of her ashes. It has a slight bit of magic to it that helps out in the tougher moments of spellcasting, but Terilu mostly keeps it out of sentiment.
Mother Haula's Earring: Ear piercing has a significance in Eratie culture. The ring you wear is a way of marking yourself. The earring Mother Haula gave him is a hollow silver circle that hangs from Terilu's left ear on a short, golden chain. This is, to those who understand the meaning of such things, the mark of a necromancer. He has a bad habit of tugging at it when he's nervous.
Father Siámie's Staff: Once a walking staff that eased his birth father's hurting joints, Terilu has carved and enchanted this family heirloom into a conduit for magical powers. Unlike the ring, when he wields it, he's truly more powerful.
Grandmother Hal'teura's Recipe Scroll: Look, no self-respecting Eratie is going on a long journey without a taste of his grandmother's fruit pie. You might say this one isn't magic, but Terilu would ask you to try saying that after you've tasted some.
What They Most Want: To escape the cycle. To Reach Beyond.
If They Had a DnD Alignment, It Would Be: Lawful Evil
Three Likes: Poetry, fun, and necromancy.
Three Dislikes: Disorder, aging, ignorance.
Do They Follow Their Heart or Their Mind?: Mind.
Worst Fear: Sinking down into the same kind of base, meaningless life that most others beings already live. Becoming caught up in the degrading cycle of animal instincts and desires, until he grows old and unachieved.
Favorite Color: The color of dawn and dusk.
Most Like The Animal: Bat. Not only because of his appearance, but because of his nocturnal habits, his love of moonlit flight and his hunting at night.
Favorite Time of Day: Deep dawn, when the stars are fading out from the sky, and the first rays of sunlight crowning over the horizon.
How They Dress:
Clothing among the Eratie is rather complex, dictated highly by class, sex and age, not to mention the natural limiting factors of one's Form, and it's shameful to deviate from the traditional style of dress.
For one such as Terilu, expected clothing is an all-leather robe that flows long in the back, down to the ankles, but is cut short in the front, revealing trousers and black shoes. There's a high, stiff leather collar to the robe, giving the ensemble an official if slightly dramatic air. There are slits for ones wings.
Through the last two years of travelling, Terilu has refused to give up this manner of dress. He left home with several outfits of this kind, and has learned to mend them when they are damaged so that he can keep on rotating through them even as he travels through hot summers and freezing winters. It's become a point of pride that he still dresses like a proper Ascendent of the Third Caste. Even if, by now, the robes are both torn and beaten down by the weather, and his shoes worn as old rat's skin.
Favorite Season: Winter. He likes the feel of flying through cold air. And besides, Winter is the season of death for many lesser creatures, so he can gather up his forms to work with. There is something very apropos about a necromancer descending on black wings out of a cold winter morn, harvesting up a body from the chilled earth. The ice keeps the corpses fresh.
What Gods/Spirits/Whatevers They Worship (If Any): The 8th Person and the Diviner.
The 8th Person is one of the nine aspects of Ad'itie, Goddess of Twilight, and the ancient patron deity of the Eratie people. Each aspect of Ad'itie represents a part of Eratie culture, has a different name and form, and corresponds to a different hour of either dusk or dawn. The 8th Person is called Eru-atie, and is the one most associated with necromancy and the darker forms of magic.
The Diviner is the emperor of the Tiatietu peninsula, and is worshipped as a mortal vessel of Ad-itie.
You see that city? You can go to that city! But also like the mountains or whatever.
The caravan starts rolling at dawn today, through a forest so green that the locals call it Emerald. People here say that the trees drop gems rather than seeds, and the flowers have flakes of gold for petals. The children and the naïve of the Pilgrimage are already running alongside the caravans- hunting for their fortune in the grass. Everyone in the Pilgrim's Caravan, one way or another, is hunting their fortune. For some it isn't treasure. Some are here to find knowledge, a new life, new experiences.
Whatever the pilgrims seek, this long and ancient caravan will bring them to more places than only this forest. It has led them each already through shifting deserts and into cities vile with chymical odor, through lands lived-in by elves that only speak secrets and across marshes where the splashing water murmurs your name, through valleys where the sun turns black overhead and over mountains made from the bodies of sleeping giants. The caravan has no destination. And it doesn't have a home. It only exists to roam, from one place to another, trading what it needs to keep itself going, but always, always going. Always finding something new and strange and miraculous.
And if you join the caravan tonight- what will you find?
(---/\---)
General Idea
So, the point of this RP is to create a fantasy game where the setting changes regularly. It's episodic, in a way. We can explore an ancient and imperialistic city one week, and then move to a magical jungle the next. There's no set time for how long we'll spend in each Destination- we'll just stay however long feels natural, fill out any stories/plots that arise, and then move on when the players start getting bored.
In-universe, the Pilgrim's Caravan is a large group of travelers, most of whom really do stay in caravans. They travel all across this world called Alwyne, bringing news and merchandise and spices from far-off places to whomever they visit. Travel in Alwyne is a bit dangerous- with the bandits, the goblins, the haunted roads and whatnot- and so the caravan is useful for people who do need to get around. It's big enough to be heavily guarded, but just quick enough to get out of dodge when something shows up that the guards can't beat.
The Caravan has been around for years, for centuries, so much so that nobody even remembers how it got started. Most people go for the obvious guess, that some old merchant company must have commissioned it long ago. But others with more active imaginations say that it was formed by criminal exiles, cast out from their home city and yet denied refuge in any other, or that a great goddess cursed her enemies to roam eternally, or that a child's game of "follow the leader" simply got way out of hand. Whatever the cause, the pilgrims continue on, traveling from one strange place (they call them Destinations) to another.
I'll be playing with you all, as a character who navigates for the Pilgrim's Caravan. But it won't be me picking our Destinations, because...
(---/\---)
Worldbuilding(!)
The Destinations is where the "Worldbuilding" aspect of this game really comes into play. When it comes time for us to go from one place to the next, I'll pick a player to make up our next location. You can come up with anything, as long as it fits the fantasy genre- the world of Alwyne is massive. A goblin city underground where we find kidnapped elves under interrogation, a forest that comes alive with spirits at night. You are encouraged to come up with plots/stories that could take place in your Destination, but reminded that players do not necessarily have to partake in them.
Either way, whatever you think of becomes canon, and I'll record it in the Lore of Alwyne, a log that I will keep of every place, magic, creature and race that we come up with. Because the Destinations aren't the only Worldbuilding element I want to bring in here: if you casually mention (IC) that there's a race of five-eared orcs who live on the other side of the Uftagarish Mountains, and you feel that should be included in our canon, just lemme know. I'll jot it down in the Lore. If this RP goes on a while, future players will see it, and know that someone thought of that. Maybe they'll add to it.
It isn't only about places. I want to flesh out Alwyne with you all!
(---/\---)
On Joining and Leaving
This RP is intentionally set up to handle losses more easily. Because the caravan has people constantly coming and going, if a player drops the RP or goes MIA, we can just say their character left the caravan at our last stop. Likewise, whenever someone new wants to join, we'll say the caravan has just picked them up. This way we can accept new players whenever, and survive losses without grinding down.
(Plus, I'm hoping that our moving to new Destinations can help prevent the RP from dying too quickly. If people are getting bored and posting is slowing to a halt, we can just move on to a new, exciting place to breathe some fresh life back into things.)
(---/\---)
Interested?
If you've read along this far, you might be interested in joining. Character sheet below. My own character sheet is in the Char tab, and can serve as an example.
P.S. I have an unfortunate fondness for long sheets that ask you about things like your character's favorite color, and their worst fear, and other nonsense. Most people are wiser than me, and so do not care about these things. If you, like me, are a fool, I've included an optional "extra details" hider within the CS that asks such questions. (At the least, it might help you develop your character a bit!)
Name
(If you've got a picture you're using, right here would be the place to drop it.)
Race, Age, Time in the Caravan: If you're playing a human, or a more familiar fantasy race, you can just write something like "Dwarf, 54, 3 years in the Pilgrim's Caravan." But if you're playing a rarer or custom race, some description of the species would also be warranted.
Appearance: (You can skip this description if you've got a pic, but it is a nice chance to show off your writing.)
History: As long or short as you like; just try to give us an idea of who they are.
Personality: Try to think of how it ties into their history, and into the next section:
Motivation: What's their motivation for joining the Pilgrim's Caravan? Are they looking for adventure, are they escaping a criminal life, do they have a specific place they're trying to get to?
Skills, Strengths and Weaknesses, and Tools: Tell me what your character is good at and what they need to do it, as well as any flaws or deficiencies they might have. If they can do magic, it'll go here. If you have a really unique type of magic (or anything similar), you might want to create a hider that explains how said magic works.
What They Most Want:
If They Had a DnD Alignment, It Would Be:
Three Likes:
Three Dislikes:
Do They Follow Their Heart or Their Mind?:
Worst Fear:
Favorite Color:
Most Like The Animal: That is, which animal they are most like- not which one they like the most.
Favorite Time of Day:
How They Dress:
Favorite Season:
What Gods/Spirits/Whatevers They Worship (If Any):
Also, if you're working on a character, don't forget to join our Discord. It's the best place to keep up with the community around this RP and discuss arcs/drama/whatevers together: discord.gg/5y9EkWyFCW
(---/\---)
Having Déjà Vu?
Psst, hey. Does any of this feel familiar to you?
About a year ago, I made this RP for the first time, but due to sudden health issues, I had to drop it before the IC could kick off. That was always a big disappointment for me, so now that I'm feeling better, we're going for round two. If you're one of the players who was with me before- welcome back! You may drop the same CS as before in the OOC, and I'll guarantee your approval. If it was greenlit before, it'll be greenlit again. Or, if you're new, welcome aboard! Some fine print before we wrap things up:
Hopefully none!
I'd rather not make any real "rules" for what/how to worldbuild here. I want it to be a free space. But most roleplays that I've ran have, at some point or another, had at least one player think of some insane stuff that I couldn't have possibly anticipated when I wrote the rules out. Then I have to choose between allowing said insanity or adding more rules to the game.
So, if we end up needing to make guidelines for the worldbuilding, it'll go here.
1.) No godmodding, no controlling other player's characters. A basic rule in any RP. You know it, you love it.
2.) Cannot kill or otherwise disable another player's character without permission. Obvious, yeah, but I like having it written out.
3.) IC, magical means of teleportation/transportation are rare. This is so that there's still a purpose for the caravan. If it were possible for people to teleport from one locale to another, we probably wouldn't be walkin' and ridin' all slow-like. (Some limited teleportation, of a few meters or in very rare circumstances, can be allowed.)
4.) If conflicts cannot be decided, the GM will arbitrate. This goes for IC and OOC conflicts. I always prefer for people to work things out mutually. Ideally, everyone can agree about who wins/loses potential fights between characters, or who has the upper hand in a negotiation, or so on. But if you can't, I'll step in to try playing judge fairly.
(---/\---)
Lore Sheets
Originally, the idea for the Lore of Alwyne was that players would mention stuff IC, and I would write it down in the Lore. But between work, other RPs and the large volume of ideas that a player group of this size can create, it has proven difficult for me to keep up. So, as a better system, I have created Lore Sheets that one fills out as they fill out a Character Sheet. Approved sheets will count as Alwyne canon.
You can submit one lore sheet for every two IC posts that you make, at most. So, if you have the itch to worldbuild- get to writing!
Race Name
Appearance: A picture can work, although a neato written description will also function. If you are going to write it out, I recommend emphasizing clarity over style; other players will need a clear picture of what your creature looks like if they are to interact with and write about them.
Description: Just a general description of the race; you can include, for example, what they're like, what they do, how they act, what god(s) created them, whatever. There's no actual rules for what to put here, I'm just asking you to tell me what they are in broad terms. More specific questions are asked in the following sections.
Inhabited Areas: Where do they live?
Cultural/Customs: What do they live like? Remember that a more spread-out and populous race likely has a lot of variation here.
Perception: How do other races tend to perceive and react to this one? For example, if this were a sheet for orcs, you might talk about how they're seen as brutal and barbaric.
Language(s): Presuming they talk.
Magic Name
Description: Tell me on the whole about the magic and what it can do.
Practitioners: Who tends to use this magic? Is it limited to a particular area, race or culture. Perhaps it is only practiced by a single shadowy cabal hidden underground. Or, on the other hand, maybe it is a common magic, simple and practiced by anyone.
Source (if any): Often, a form of magic in a fantasy setting will be fueled by a particular thing. Mana, divine power, a pact with Cthuhlu, the inner strength of the practitioner, or what have you. Assuming your magic comes from something- what is it?
Perception: How is this magic perceived by others and the world at large? Is it seen as evil, holy, cryptic, academic? Or perhaps it is not known by many at all?
Note: This is for both nations and for large regions/cultures that we may encounter as the Caravan.
Other Note: Notice that, despite the various questions, this is a very light sheet template by NS standards; that is intentional. Please keep in mind that this is not an NRP. We are describing places our characters might encounter. If your itch is to describe an entire nation-state in detail, this is the wrong RP to do that. I may reject overlarge sheets of this kind.
Culture/Nation Name
(If you have a flag or other symbol representing this culture/nation, this would be a good place to drop it.)
Description: In broad terms, describe this land. If some of the information is redundant with later questions, that's okay. This is just the intro.
Demographics: What races, groups, religions and so forth tend to inhabit this area? If it makes mention of races and deities already approved in other sheets, consider that bonus points.
Culture and Society: How do the people here live?
History: How did this land come to be?
Governance: Easy to assume they're a kingdom, given the setting, but they don't have to be. If this is a land so different that they don't even have a form of governance, this would also be the place to note that.
Perception:
How Might They React To A Visit From The Caravan?
Note: This sheet can be used for both individual gods and also for describing a pantheon of gods as a whole.
Deity/Pantheon Name
Appearance: A picture can work, although a neato written description will also function. If your god is so conceptual that they don't have an appearance/form, you may note that here. And, of course, a god might have many forms they appear in.
Domain: What are they the god of? Multiple things can be listed here, of course.
Behavior/Persona: This is essentially the "personality" section, but for gods. Tell me how they act. Are they wrathful and punishing? Merciful, stern, unpredictable? Do they have a fascination with cheese?
Worship: Not who worships them, but rather, how are they worshipped? Through services at a church or similar institution? Meditation? Dark rituals performed at midnight? Through simply the lives and actions of the individual worshipper?
Worshippers: *Now* tell me who worships them ;P
Perception: How do people and the world at large tend to perceive this god and their followers?
Symbols, Artefacts, Icons: If any.
Event Name
Note: This means any large-scale historical or magical event that you believe should be included in the Lore of Alwyne. It might be a meteor crash. It might be a lich those rose up five eons ago and tried to conquer the world. It doesn't mean smaller things, since this would be events of a historic scale.
What: Describe the event to me, please. What happened? As this is an overview of the whole thing, it's okay if some of the information you include here is a little redundant with questions asked later on in this sheet.
When: When did it happen?
Where: Where, roughly speaking?
Why: Presumably, something caused or lead up to the event.
(---/\---)
The Lore of Alwyne
Note: The more generic fantasy races- such as elves, half-elves, dwarves, goblings and orcs- are not described here purely because most people already know what they are
A race of desert-dwelling dwarves who live in a society of Great Clans built within the valleys and crevices of desert-borne mountains, having much to do with the nearby Dinnin culture. They have, in fact, largely adopted the Dinnin faith. They are seen by the Dinnin proper as being neither truly Dinnin nor merely Kaffin; their culture has therefore gradually been accepted into the desert people's way of life. They are known for "scriptsmithing," a form of runesmithing that uses Dinnin script instead of traditional dwarvish runes.
The Dinnin-dwarvish culture was created by Enigmatik
Hailing from the Giant's Spire mountains, the Stoneclaw Giants are- as their name would imply- a huge, towering race of humanoids. They're known to be generally isolationist, choosing to ignore the outside world in favor of simply protecting their mountain home and the valuable mines they dig there.
The Stone Clans - They are giant clans which resides on the tallest mountains in the North. Each clans is made up of 6 tribes that have their own leadership. The clans are all specialized in different crafts and trades. Some are great Earth magic users. Some are miners. Some are traders. The Clans are lead by the Giant King, a legendary being that is 20 metres tall and it's said to be older than most races. The tribes are all lead individually by tribe chieftains but all answer to one Clan Chief which is chosen from within the tribes that make up the Clan.
Q&A 1. What are the names of the six tribes within each clan, and what are their distinct specialties or crafts?
The Clans are as follows:
The Stoneclaw Clan - They are all warriors of high demand. Some join up as mercenaries while others serve as the military arm of the Clans. The Stoneheart Clan - They're the miner of the Clans. They live deep within mountains mining different minerals or making space for other giants. The Stonehand Clan - The Earth Magic masters of the clans. The Stonefeet Clan - This Clan is composed of smaller giants. They're the trading arm of the Clans. The Stonemind Clan - They are the thinkers, the inventors, the smart giants. The Stonemouth Clan- They are the farmers, the caretakers of the Clans. Great Yao Guai sheep and Yao Guai goats are being herded, bred, milked and slaughtered for the clans.
2. How do the clans interact with one another? Are there any alliances or conflicts between specific clans?
The clans all answer to the King and his laws. If there's a dispute between tribes, the Clan leader can be petitioned to resolve the issue. If there is an issue between Clans, it'll be up to the King.
3. Tell me about the unique Earth magic abilities of some clans. What can they do with this magic?
The Stone Shapers model mountains to fit their needs. Rituals lasting decades can be done to raise new mountains or rocks can be shaped in any form they wish.
4. How do the clans obtain the resources they need, considering some are miners and traders? Do they trade with outsiders?
Everything done by the Clans is meant to be used by all clans. The traders only deal with their own unless caravans from the other races reach their lands.
5. What's the history behind the origin of the Stone Clans, and why do they live in isolation?
Ancient Conflict: Many centuries ago, the Stone Clans faced a devastating conflict with a powerful neighbouring civilization. This conflict, known as the "War of the Peaks," led to immense loss of life and resources. This combined with their size made them to be seen with suspicion and fear.
6. How do outsiders view the Stone Clans, and do they have any interactions with smaller communities?
Most nations don't know about the existence of the Stone Clans as they live far from most nations. Those that know of them, prefer to let them be than face their wrath.
The Stoneclaw Giants were created by TimeMaster
You know what a human is.
A homunculus is less a race than it is a constructed being. It's a creature made of clay, just like a sculpture, but magically brought to life by its creators to serve some purpose or other. It's not at all unlike a golem, with the key difference being that a homunculus has a mind and will of its own.
Homunculus were added by twannyman
A mixed race, "Tiefling" is a term for a person born with some devilish or otherwise darkly supernatural heritage, but who is not fully a devil themselves. They're often human or elven in the face and in the overall form, but still marked by the undeniable memoirs of the more abysmal side of their family tree: horns, bat wings, tails. It's hard for the common folk not to fear and mistrust a person who looks like such an evil creature; a Tiefling is rarely welcomed among others.
Tieflings were added by Abstract Proxy
The Ainok are a dog-like beastrace, native to dry savannahs and scorching deserts. They live a semi-nomadic, clan-based lifestyle, travelling during the dry seasons of the year but settling in for more permeant homes during the wet season. They are shorter, more lithe than humans, and covered in a blotched, multihued fur, earning them the nickname "the Painted Folk."
Although an ally of the Dinnin kingdoms, the Ainok have stayed true to their own form of astronomical spirituality and believe in predicting ones fortunes through study of the night sky. As most never learn to read nor write, they also cling to a strong oral tradition.
The Ainok race was created by Enigmatik
The Eratie are a bat-like beastrace, complete with bat wings, snouts and fur, and lightweight bodies made for flying. At least, that's the typical Eratie: unlike most races, an Eratie's physical form varies greatly depending on the circumstantial "Powers" surrounding their birth. Things such as the time of day that an Eratie is born on, the ambient magic in the air, the stars overhead, and even the lighting in the room will all affect both how an Eratie looks at birth, and what they grow up into. Some are more bat-like, some more human-like or elf-like, and some have completely unexpected features such as horns.
Eratie are native to a small peninsula they name as Tureiamú, and there they have a complicated, strict culture heavily regulated by a caste system. They have little interaction with humans or other "ignorant" races.
Eratie were created by Tortoise
Orphic, as it is practiced today, is a form of magic that uses Mana to power its spells and imbue items. Due to persecutions now passed, there's a tradition that this style is taught in semi-secrecy, from masters to just a single apprentice at a time. There was once another form of Orphic magic- that appeared not to rely on Mana- but that "High Path" is now lost to history.
Orphic was the style of magic practiced by the Oscana kingdom, and was split into two disciplines - the High Path, and the Low Path.
The High Path is now lost to us, all that remains is the Low Path.
Orphic teaches that there are little known currents of energy flowing in and around this world - in the sky, in the land, in fire, and the sea - and are known as ley lines, that only those with the mage sight can see. Depending on their size and nearness, they can provide a slow trickle or an immense flow of power. In Oscana, many important buildings would be constructed either on a ley line, or where two or more ley lines cross to take advantage of these flows.
A side-effect of this flow of power is that books of magic would often needed to be chained to the shelves - to prevent their escape.
For those on the Low Path, in order to access this power, they needed to convert it into a more stable, usable form, known as Mana. To aid them in this, they would borrow power from a mana reservoir to imbue their staves, then use their staves to draw power from the ley lines to refill the reservoir.
It is very important for the one who takes power from the reservoir to return it, lest it leaches off of them to restore its balance. They, in turn, may try to leach off of others, but this only temporarily quenches their thirst.
Those on the Low Path could then use the mana they collected to power their spells, or imbue items with abilities beyond their simple appearance that almost anyone could use.
The Roulon Empire viewed magic to be reserved for their aristocrat class, and resented this "commoner magic." This, more than anything, lead to their invasion of Oscana. Books were burned, reservors broken. Practitioners of Orphic were declared witches or warlocks, not unlike their own bastard children who showed any sign of magic, and were burned at the stake. In an act of cruelty, the nobles would prolong their victims' agonies by providing them with air so they wouldn't die from breathing the smoke before their flesh began to burn.
Orphic practioners of the Low Path hid themselves, shaving their staves into wands that could be hidden up sleeves. One woman, it is said, hid her stave as the shaft of her parasol, all the while working as a nanny to hide from the empire's witchfinders.
The spells were shuffled into smaller, more specialized books, so that if you knew what line they belonged to, you knew the spells they could cast. Instead of teaching in groups, there would be one master and one apprentice, working in secret. The apprentice's first task would be to copy the contents of their master's book. They would then study them in secret after their master had left to learn how to cast those spells. Later, they would take an apprentice and train them before moving on themselves.
Orphic line mages soon aquired apprentices in other lands, some in which their apprentices could work openly, like some of the Elvish kingdoms. However, most of the Orphic continue this practice of training one apprentice at a time before moving on, even though the Roulon empire has collapsed.
Orphic magic was created by Expendable
Utterance is a brand of magic that allows practitioners to speak to the elements of nature, such as wood, stone, wind, and so forth. Those who practice this gradually gain an affinity for the elements they most often speak to, and exert some power over them.
Its practice has been refined especially by the Uttering Monks of the Eld Marshes, who have tied it into their religion and consider it a form of spirituality.
Utterance has been described as a kind of cross-breed between druidism and elemental magic. It is a form of language, allowing one to speak (literally, with their voices) to the non-living aspects of nature, like stone, or sunlight. The obvious use for such a power would be to control natural elements; to tell a fire to cook or to burn down, to teach ice to freeze itself around a threat, to call on rain for the crops. It can do those things, though not so often or effectively as a true wizard might. (Reason being: the elements can say "no" to one using Utterance.)
Instead, the main reason the Uttering Monks study it is for learning from nature. Nature, after all, witnesses and knows many things mankind does not. One who speaks to the stars may learn from them the correct paths to travel, may hear of ancient history those stars' eyes have seen, may be told of great and secret things that happen in the heavens. Those who whisper to the wind may hear it whisper back, telling them of news from far-off lands, of secrets said in a king's chambers while the window was open and the night breeze whistling by. They cannot control the elements with the same precision as a mage, maybe, but a Sayer (that is, one who practices Utterance) knows far more.
And this learning goes deeper than head-knowledge, too. Finally, a Sayer has an Aura. Their Aura is based on the elements of nature they most often speak too, because as you commune with something such as fire, you will find that burning power seeping into your own soul. The Aura a Sayer has is felt almost tangibly around them, and heard in their voice, giving most of them a kind of unnatural charisma. One who speaks to stone seems strong and unbreakable, one who speaks to ice becomes coldly intellectual. All of them feel impossible to argue with. A good Sayer tends to get their way in conversations. Their voice carries much weight.
Utterance was created by Tortoise
Scriptsmithing (also known as Runesmithing, and by a few other such names) is an artform that allows a specially trained smith to imbue items with magical powers- thus creating powerful, magical artifacts out of the fires of their forge. Scriptsmithing is most often practiced by those of the dwarven race.
Known by several other names- runesmithing, glyphcrafting, and so on and so forth, the core of scriptsmithing is the same. With strike of hammer and bloom of flame, dwarves can imbue items, thereafter elevated to 'artifacts' with potent magical power. Each scriptsmith goes through decades of their life training in scriptsmithing- from days as a journeyman apprentice, writing and reciting the words, to a proficient student, capable of wielding the hammer themselves, to finally a fully qualified smith, each hammerblow pulling from sources beyond to fill their crafts with power.
A competent scriptsmith is capable of forging great artifacts for others, should they have the time and ingredients to do so. The very finest of scriptsmith crafts are made from the legendary 'starmetal,' believed by the Dinnin Dwarves to be leftover fragments of ancient Gods that came before the Light. In its raw form, starmetal is fantastically magically unstable, throwing out wayward energies that sicken and even kill those handling it unprotected- but the dwarves, with their natural resistances, are able to forge and refine it, creating artifacts with a beautiful damascene finish.
Scriptsmithing's potential, in the hands of a master smith, is almost unlimited. So long as one knows the words with which to express their intent, a scriptsmith can create anything from wondrous automata to staves capable of stopping a rampaging oliphaunt dead in its tracks. Alas, such a thing requires a dwarf ancient and competent. One simply does not become a master scriptsmith in a century or two.
Scriptsmithing was created by Enigmatik
Mycomancy is a dark form of magic involving fungi and mold. It is used to manipulate and control molds, whether this be simply speeding up the process of fermentation or the breaking down of dead matter, or generating entire lifeforms out of mold that are under the caster's command. Terrifyingly, a mycomancer can also infest living creatures with mold, slowing and weakening them.
Mycomancy was created by Lugubrious
Vitae is an energy that flows through all creatures, and there are some who are able to harness this energy to empower their own bodies.
Vitae, also known as the energy of life is a universal force that dwells within every living being. To use it and train in it, you need to unlock it via meditation, training, and often a life-altering event. In general, the use of Vitae is simple, it enhances the body. Be that it's agility, strength, recovery speed or train of thought. It might make you jump higher, run faster, think faster or recover faster. As a source, it is not unlimited and should not be used for prolonged periods of time, if a being fully runs out of Vitae, they cannot access it for at the very least a month.
The way one trains Vitae is mostly by meditation, by transferring and absorbing the Vitae in the surrounding area one's source can grow. However if one kills a being by draining it's Vitae, the energy gets corrupted, turning poisonous unless repelled or extracted.
Vitae was created by Twannyman
Although there are no doubt many different breeds of divine-infused magic, practiced by different faithful across the wide lands of Alwyne, the goddess Valradun's magic in particular is worth noting for its connection to lunar energy.
Nemeia is a priestess of the moon goddess Valradun. Imbued with divine magic, she commands lunar energy and powers of the moon granted to her by her deep connection to Valradun. Arising from her belief and trust in Valradun, her magic does not depend on formulaic prayers, ancient rites, or any arcane scholarship. Nemeia is a gifted healer, mending injuries and curing diseases through the manifestation of miracles brought forth by her steadfast faith. She weaves powerful protective spells, affording the blessings of the silver moon to those in need. Dedicated to preserving the natural order of life, Nemeia can channel the radiant light of Valradun to drive away the undead or harm evil creatures.
Valradun's Divine Magic was created by Abstract Proxy
The Oblitarchy are an old, lost pantheon of primordial deities. Those who worship them believe that they existed before all else- even the gods themselves. Although the Oblitarchs themselves are a group of deities, their followers have access to a form of magic unique to those who follow them.
There are ten "essences" (called, naturally, the Tenfold Essences) within Oblitarchy, each derived from one of the ten Oblitarch deities, and each grants different powers to a practioner.
In plain English, Morvanne is a spellcaster dedicated to the various powers who those in the know refer to as the Oblitarchy, and the Tenfold Essences that Obliturges categorise. Morvanne in particular found herself predisposed to the Oblitarch known as the Threshold, associated with the essence of Hypist. This is the essence of the sleeping mind - where experiences become memory and memory engrained, and thus the Threshold is a peculiar thing - gifting and taking away knowledge in equal parts, and reigning over all that has been murmured in twilight.
Because of this, Morvanne is unusually well-educated considering her age in matters both of and not of this world, but this comes with it not only a forgetfulness of her own past, but also with remembering things that are not true, at least not within this Time. Outside of the Threshold, she also dabbles in the essences of Syis and Senopy: Change and Silence. Her lucky escapes and the sudden sickness that took her employer have not been entirely happenstance or accident.
To call upon these powers Morvanne must conduct rituals: long-winded things requiring careful preparation, the right ingredients, and potentially hours of tongue-twisting work to complete. Calling upon an essence requires items, people, times or places strong in that essence: A bloody knife for Ravume, a lover’s assistance for Percus or the deep midwinter for Senopy. For more complex rituals other, occasionally conflicting essences must be called upon and the more powerful the ritual, the more intense the essences going into it must be. A small Hypist ritual might only require twilight, but for the greater rituals… Well, a city on wheels is rather liminal, is it not?
Oblitarch Magic was created by Enigmatik
The Oblitarchy are an old, lost pantheon of primordial deities. Those who worship them believe that they existed before all else- even the gods themselves. There are ten of them, created through a great struggle beginning with the first two, and each champion some aspect of the mortal world.
And look, this one comes with a graph!
The ‘Gods Before Gods,’ the Oblitarchy are a lost pantheon of deities who have, according to their believers, existed before anything else. Before there was Alwyne there were two of them: The Nowhere and The Glory, consisting of existence and everything outside of it, locked in an eternal dance which neither could overcome. The Nothing however, begot The Sunderer, and living up to their name they slew The The Glory and usurped The Nowhere, and from this calamitous beginning, all other Oblitarchs would rise, each one domineering an aspect of the mortal world that had formed with their struggles.
The Ten Oblitarchs and their Essences are typically depicted around a ten-pointed star, showing their relation to the other Oblitarchs. Clockwise, from the top:
The Sun Divided is the truest form of the slain Glory, heading the triarchy known as the Gods ex Solari. It is the rising sun – a peerless, wrathful, and unforgiving deity that seeks to bring forth the hours of The Glory once again and to gather all other essences within itself, to remake the universe as it once was. Its essence is Ejas, and it consists of the waking mind – higher intelligence, the drive of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, and the unrelenting progress of mortals.
The Chalice is the second of the Gods ex Solari: Once the warmth and comfort of the sun that nurtured life, the Chalice still holds that benevolent spirit. Its essence, Prist, is the only of the ten essences that can be physically touched, for it consists of the physical body – bones, muscle, sinew and blood.
The Threshold heads the diarchy of the Gods Obsucras. The Threshold is twilight – it is soft and dimly lit, existing between day and night, and holds dominion over all that is liminal. Its essence is Hypist, and where Ejas is the waking mind, Hypist is the dreaming mind. It is a master of irrationality and illogic. It holds memories and recognition, half-truths and lies, and shares freely, although not without cost.
The Prism is the other of the Gods Obscuras and one of the more esoteric of an already esoteric lot. Shunning one form, the Prism is ever-changing and ever-formless, refusing to be neatly categorised or pinned down. Much like itself, its essence, Syis, is the constant drive for change and evolution, although it cares little for the direction that this change takes.
The Nowhere is the oldest of the Gods ex Nihi, and is the only of the Oblitarchs to have lasted unchanged from the dawn of nothingness. If the Oblitarchs can indeed dwell in our reality, The Nowhere holds itself somewhere far beyond the comfort of Alwyn, out in the unforgiving darkness where nothing dwells and nothing can ever dwell. It exists in contrary to anything else, and has created only once – its greatest mistake. The Nowhere’s essence is Nihi, and it is true illogicality. Things which must not be known and cannot be known, places where life itself has been banished, never to return, - these are where Nihi is strongest. Those few mortals brave enough to try to master Nihi are known as apocalypsists and almost inevitably meet untimely demises.
The Sunderer heads the Gods ex Nihi, having overthrown its parent and shattered the Glory. It measures itself not on its own merits, but on how effectively it contrasts the Sun Divided, the pair locked in eternal enmity just as the Glory and the Nowhere once were, long ago. The Sunderer’s essence is Ravume, and although often categorised as nothing more than hatred, jealousy, ego and anarchic rage, is far more about contest and competition, thriving where there is conflict, and quick to raise a blade when offended or challenged.
The Silence is an oft-forgotten member of the Gods ex Nihi, which is ironic, for it is the ultimate fate of all mortal life. The Silence reigns in the ice of deepest winter, at the bottom of the darkest caves and in the endless abyss deep beneath the ocean’s surface. Its essence, Senopy, is the quiet death that comes to all mortals not slain in piques of Ravume – old age, sickness, cancer and frailty, those things that linger deep within the bones of mortals that comes out one day to claim them – this is Senopy.
The Constant is the lesser of the diarchy known as the Gods Exertus, and is as much a contrast of the Prism as the Sunderer is the Sun Divided. It not static, but instead driving ever-forward, an unrelenting force that refuses to allow others to slow or divert it. Its essence, Effiv, is willpower and fortitude, and sheer dogged determination – the drive to climb the highest peaks and cross the deepest valleys for no other reason than that they are there, and therefore should be conquered.
The Flame heads the diarchy of the Gods Exertus, and is one of the most intimately mortal of all the Oblitarchs. The Flame is ingenuity and skill, progress not for progress’ sake, but for improvement and inspiration. Its essence, Emiv, was there when mortalkind first learnt to make sparks to tame the flames, and has been there for every subsequent step of the way. It is technology, learned skills and craftwork, and it will only grow stronger.
The Delight is the last of the Gods Ex Solari, and is the rawest form of the Glory – its explosive force, its pulsing rhythm, its undulating colours. Its essence, Percus, is lust and gluttony, sloth and pride, but also delight, love, happiness and all the other of the myriad emotions that swell a mortal’s heart.
The Oblitarchy was created by Enigmatik
Eld Frowen is a monotheistic god honored by the Uttering Monks of the Old Marshes, who affirm that He alone created the world and all other deities are but broken reflections of Him.
The Uttering Monks, and those marshlanders whose villages are sprinkled amidst their monasteries, worship the ancient god Eld Frowen. They teach that it was him who Spoke all things into being at the beginning of time, and their practice of Utterance is but a pale imitation of that great act. Eld Frowen sits in the Unseeable Throne at the center of the earth, far underneath the sunlit lands, and He is still Speaking today. Every word that He says keeps the world in motion, keeps the sun rising every morning and breath in our lungs. All the universe is like a story told by Eld Frowen. (In fact, Uttering Monks often call the world of Alwyne "The Great Story.")
Other gods and deities are seen as Echoes of Eld Frowen's words, which form when the words He says echo off the walls of the great cavern that is his throne room, being changed and distorted in the process. Every other god is therefore an echo or a perversion of something Eld Frowen once said.
In art, Eld Frowen is often depicted as half man, half fae, and either blind or eyeless. Blind, because the monks teach that He is a bit of an absent creator, "an unmovable mover," who keeps the universe in motion but does not otherwise interfere in people's lives or the events of history. In a sense, He is a god both blind and deaf, neither watching over the world nor much hearing prayers- only speaking His great story, ad perpetuam.
Eld Frowen was created by Tortoise
Ad'itie is a Goddess of Twilight, Lies and Shadows. She's the patron deity and believed creator of the Eratie, a bat-like beastrace, and all throughout the world of Alwyne they are the only creatures who truly worship her. This is not surprising, as she's held not to be a native god of Alwyne at all, but a powerful, alien being who originates from a far-away liminal plane entirely of shadows, half-truths, and almost-reals.
Ad'itie was created by Tortoise
A sea-goddess, Fãrryn is a known deity among sailors.
Fãrryn, goddess of the sea. She appears as a young elvish woman with wavy blue hair who reminds you of a playful dolphin. She has deep-set eyes the color of milk. She has an Amazonian build. Her skin is white. She has thick eyebrows and small hands. Their icon is a conch shell.
Fãrryn possesses two powerful items - a magical conch shell that allows her to control sea creatures; and Kŷiriŏn - a magic boat that can go anywhere at command (it is actually her son from a drunken trysk with a sailor, her father Ievis of the Forest thought her son was a degenerate and transformed him).
Valrudun is a powerful goddess, one worshipped for quite some time, who is most closely connected with the moon that shines over Alwyne each night. There are a few who go as far as to even claim that she has become the moon itself.
She's a gentle, giving sort of goddess. Her followers are not overburdened with strict rules, and her clergy are good people who treat few as being beyond redemption.
A greater goddess, worshiped since the ancient days of Alriel, Valradun is a powerful goddess said to hold sway over the moon and celestial bodies that shine in the sky of Alwyne. Over the ages, the domains she is believed to control have grown in number, and at present she is recognized as influencing a wide range of areas. Valradun's nature, appearance, and mood all change in turn with the phases of the moon. She is generous and freely bestowed gifts and blessings on mortals. She also makes few demands of her followers. When beseeched by her clergy, she is said to readily respond.
Drawn by teachings that emphasize compassion and gentle guidance, her faithful are a diverse group, and come from many walks of life. According to words of Valradun, all on whom the moonlight falls are welcome to join her.
Valradun is believed to control the ebb and flow of the tides. She is said to bring comfort and safety to those in need during the night. She shines light over the darkness, holding evil at bay through moonlight. Some learned scholars argue that Valradun has become the moon itself, infusing the moon of Alwyne with her very spirit, so that she can eternally watch over the world. Through the moon, she is thought to control the powers of lycanthropes.
Those who seek her help and favor are many. She is called by those who are lost, aiding travelers lost in the wild and ships drifting aimlessly at sea. Sailors, navigators, and travelers are known to ask for her guidance. Her protection is sought out by those about to embark on dangerous journey. Ever changing, Valradun is venerated by shapeshifters, especially lycanthropes. Regardless of the quality of their heart or their view of their condition, many of those afflicted with such curses see her as the mistress of their nature. Observing the guidance she graciously offers, some engaged in the endeavor of predicting the future, have come to the conclusion that Valradun might rule fate itself.
Although she cares little for the gender of her followers, Valradun is commonly worshipped by women, who look to her for guidance, courage, and strength. A being concerned with life, Valradun is said to love all those touched by her radiant light. She is believed to be able to deliver love to those who seek it honestly and to bless marriages entered in good faith. She is said to intercede during births to ensure the safety of parent and child. Finding beauty in many places, Valradun blesses all things that she finds beautiful, recognizing that sometimes pleasing the senses can be kindness enough. Conventional as she may seem, Valradun encourages her followers to be self-reliant and to discover their own path. She is therefore popular with adventurers, all those who stand apart from others, and chart their own course.
It has even been said that she is one of the few gods worshiped by non-wicked tieflings. Driven by her dedication to the protecting life and confronting evil, Valradun is known to grant visions to people who desired them for good purposes. As such, even those not dedicated to Valradun will often pay their respects to her, in hopes of gaining her favor and aid.
Finally, those born during the full moon are said to be blessed by Valradun and are often encouraged, if not expected, to worship the moon goddess.
Unlike many gods, Valradun does not chain her followers with heavy ultimatums. She is lenient on issues of alignment and religious observe. To her faithful, to follow one's heart and to do the right thing is viewed as more important than uninspired theological musing or the strict performance of rituals. Her worshipers are encouraged to be compassionate and tolerant of others. They are urged to be humble and self-reliant, to use common sense and practicality.
Followers of Valradun seek out her guidance through observations of the heavens and rituals conducted under the moonlit night sky. They believe that life changes like the moon, waxing and waning with each passing moment. Her clergy suggest that there is a natural cycle to all of existence, arguing that there is an unavoidable ebb and flow to every force found in the world. Valradun and her followers view the undead and evil creatures mournfully, believing that while such unnatural forces must be swiftly opposed and defeated, they are not always beyond redemption.
Valradun was created by Abstract Proxy
The Guardian of Travelers. The Wanderer stands out amongst deities for having no temples or priesthood, and belonging to no pantheon of other deities. He focuses instead on protecting those who travel, and- apropos to his domain- those clerics who serve The Wanderer are very much wanderers themselves, travelling throughout the world.
This god of travelers takes the form of a young man. He has a graceful build, with straw-like hair and silver eyes. He has tan skin. He's usually depicted wearing a green cloak, a tan tunic, dark breeches, and sandals. He carries a sack on a pole resting on his shoulder, while the other holds a walking staff.
His icon is a sandal.
He has no temples or priests as such, his clerics travel as he does. When their sandals wear out, they mark the spot with a pile of stones with the sandal pinned on top. Later, the Wanderer's clerics will leave a box with a digging trowel inside, and start building a roadside shelter using the materials around them.
The rule of the box is if you take a useful item from the box, you must replace it with another useful item. Misfortune will dog the steps of those who take from the box without leaving anything in its place.
Clerics learn how to tend to wounds and sickness using herbs, childbirth, and can be called to officiate weddings, births, funerals, or to settle disputes. Each carries with them two lexicons, the Way of the Road, and a personal journal.
The Wanderer was created by Expendable
The Old Marshes are a marshland country not far from Trist, known for its ancient monasteries, gloomy weather, the practice of Utterance magic, and the persistent presence of vampires.
The Old Marshes were created by Tortoise
Trist is an old, forgetful land, somewhere to the west and somewhere to the north, not terribly far from the Old Marshes. It is a land of stone, earth, and bones, tilled and toiled upon by peasants, ridden hard upon by nobles, and settled extensively by wave after wave of migrant, invader and coloniser. Out in the oldest of its places, villages that once proudly stood for generations have been covered by the silt of time, and in their place are barrows and tombs... Yet in its beating heart stand proud citadels of heavy stone and sloped roofs, gutters near-overspilling from the rain that frequently drizzles down.
The earth of Trist is fertile and rich, fine fodder for the peasant folk to divide into hedgerow-split fields or to allow sheep and cattle to ramble over. Although few would call it the most blessed place on Alwyne, only a fool would deny that the people of Trist feast more often than they experience famine.
Trist has wytch-hunters.
Trist was created by Enigmatik
A rocky and mountainous region, home to the Stoneclaw Giants and their six tribes.
Giant's Spire was created by TimeMaster
Morenia, a somewhat poorly-understood kingdom rumored to be a place of lawful evil. It's so far to the north, however, that many in the more southern lands of Alwyne debate whether the rumored words about it are true at all.
She hails from the distant land of Morenia, far to the north, past the fallen Kingdom of Undast, and across the Sea of Bitter Tears. Said to be ruled by the archdevil Ixelja, remembered by masters of the High Art as the merchant of souls, a fell creature known for offering bargains to those faced with inescapable doom. Whether such forgotten recollections are true, is hard to discern, and some explorers maintain that Morenia is simply a particularly inhospitable kingdom.
Mentioned in a scattering of forbidden tomes thought lost to the ages, Morenia is reputed to be a realm of law and evil, once named by the Sage Belynia as one of the uncountable circles of hell
Morenia was created by Abstract Proxy
Tureiamú is a small western peninsula, a wooded area known as the homeland to the Eratie race. It is isolationistic and full of Eratie tradition.
But, fair warning- your tags didn't work. None of us got the notification that this was birthed. You may wish to do some rounds and make sure we all heard ;P
Never RPed in a Mecha RP but I've re-read Mecha Ace CYOA book just a few days ago and I'm very much in the mood for a mecha RP. So, if you've got space, I'll jump in!
We meet again, dear TM.
If your character is named Ashevelen I'm hitting her. Or hitting on her. We'll see.
Main One groups: The One once had a name, each of his names define a group or caste of the One.
James - Hunters, Crafters, Soldiers; those that manage to survive a decade are "elevated" to the name Grant. They mark themselves with a handprint to set them apart from others.
William - Food mostly but also those that venture into the most dangerous locations. An "old" William is very rare. They're marked on their cheeks with two horizontal scars.
Grant - Diplomats, Scientists, Leaders. The "face" of the One. Any interaction with the One would have at least a Grant present.
While they all share all knowledge they get and any William can do a Grant’s job or the other way around, age is what usually sets them apart.
A William would reach a maximum age of 2, a James can go above that and live up to 10 years before becoming a Grant and eventually dying of old age or bullets or whatever else.
The Old One
The Old One is an anomaly between the One as they've been around since the first clone was made. Their true identity is unknown but they're seen in places where the Immortalis's defences are the worst. It's unknown how they can do that and their identity.
Population: 4 billion --- ---
Planet Name and Description: 00110001 is a barren planet with no notable mineral resources. Covered on one side by a burning wasteland which is constantly under temperatures of +50C and on the other side, a frozen tundra with temperatures between -100 and -500 at its coldest point. Split in the middle by the ruins of an ancient alien city surrounded by a huge dome. The city is a massive ruin full of robotic defences that attack anything biological in nature. Unfortunately, the planet is covered by thick black clouds that don't let light from the nearby sun to illuminate it. The weirdest part of the planet is the occasional pocket of "altered reality" as called by the One. Places that appear randomly at times around the city, if one is trapped within a pocket, they can see people long dead trying to kill them, stairwells that go into infinity, one might find themselves trapped into a room without doors or windows and many different other phenomenon that cannot be explained by the One. These pockets usually dissappear after a few hours but most who're trapped within die horrifying deaths.
History: As soon as the colony ship went through the Gateway, it encountered a powerful EMP field generated by numerous unidentifiable spheres. The ship crash landed on the nearest planet. A good number of colonists died even before they stepped out of the ship. Soon the colonists realised that they wouldn't be able to survive on the planet due to the very high/very low temperatures of the planet's climate. Luckily the ship landed close to what seemed to be the ruins of a city that stretched from one side to the other of the plane, splitting the planet into two halves and thus' they decided to settle the ancient city.
Not much remained of it but buildings with no recognisable tech. Food and resources were scarce and everyday people would starve or die of a number of strange illnesses. Soon, all would die. In-fighting killed the rest. It didn't help that the aliens left automated defences on the planet that were still functioning, nor the lack of light.
Eventually only one person remained. Using the bodies of his fellow colonists and refined urine/snow, he had enough to live on his own. Understanding that he will most likely go crazy and that he might be the only human alive, he devoted himself to one purpose. Make sense of the alien technology in the hopes of finding a way off the planet.
10 years after Arrival, he managed to find a massive underground that still had power and he knew that he finally found what he was looking for. Inside he found thousands of ultra-advanced cloning vats and the spheres that brought down their ship in the first place. After months of trial and error, he succeeded in cloning himself. No longer alone, he made more and more of himself.
After almost 300 years, parts of the ancient alien city are now repopulated with only one person - 4 billion times.
Culture and Society: The society of The One is easy to understand. Every clone is an individual but they are all the same with the same likes and dislikes where one is working for the betterment of everyone as they are everyone.
<Snipped quote by The One>
---
Governance and Politics: The One don't have a form of government per se, as they are One and the same, each knows what's good for the other without the need for debate.
Technology Overview:
1. Ultra Advanced Cloning Vats allow a full grown human to be made in 48 hours.
2. The Dome - a huge structure meant to resist the worst environments.
3. Human-Batteries - All the major tech of The One will be sustained by human batteries which use their bodies to power them up. Depending on the power needed, the number of human batteries needed can be up to 1 million (for the cloning vats)
Military Overview: The military of The One operates within the limited territory they control, primarily focused on the defence and expansion of their domain within the city. With only 40% of the city under their control, their military efforts are concentrated on clearing and securing these areas from the remaining automated defenses left by the Immortalis civilization.
1. Clearing Operations: The One undertakes regular clearing operations to neutralise the automated defences within the city. These defences, including robots, drones, and turrets, are formidable adversaries, but they are confined to specific areas and do not venture beyond their designated zones. The military's main objective is to systematically eliminate these defences, allowing for the gradual expansion of The One's territory.
These clearing operations require careful planning, coordination, and combat skills. The clones, equipped with weapons crafted from their own bones, such as swords, spears, bows, and javelins, engage in close-quarters combat with the automated defenses. Their shared knowledge and skills acquired through cloning enable them to adapt and counter the defensive mechanisms efficiently even if a few hundred have to die first.
2. Specialised Operations: The One may occasionally undertake specialised operations within the city. These operations could include reconnaissance missions to gather intelligence on the remaining automated defences or retrieval missions to recover valuable artefacts or technologies from areas previously inaccessible.
3. Security and Defense Operations: Maintaining the security and defence of The One's controlled areas is an integral part of their military operations. The One establishes a network of defensive structures, fortifications, and surveillance systems to protect against external threats.The One's military force, diligently monitor the perimeters and swiftly respond to any breaches, and neutralise potential dangers to safeguard the population.
Infrastructure & more: 1.Food: Within a specific area of the city, there exists a unique species of luminescent mushrooms, named glowy one. These mushrooms are cultivated and cloned to meet the nutritional requirements of The One. They serve as a vital protein source, supplemented by the combination of their own cloned tissues.
1.1. Water: Due to the frozen nature of one side of their world, The One relies on this abundant resource. While the initial challenges of making the water less harmful to the human body resulted in the loss of many lives, the remaining population benefits from this readily available water source, despite the extreme temperatures.
2. Electricity: The One harnesses their own collective energy by interconnecting thousands of individuals to power up the cloning vats, for everything else the One relies on fire as their primary source of illumination and power. They developed techniques for fire management, including the creation of long-lasting and efficient fire sources using an oily substance found on the automated defences they destroy. The substance burns for very long periods of time but not at a high heat.
3. Materials and Tools: The One's approach to clothing and tools is resourceful and self-sustaining. They employ a unique method of utilising their own biological resources. Leather is sourced from their own cloned bodies, fulfilling their modest clothing requirements. As for tools, bones are repurposed and serve various functions. While bones may break, the vast abundance of available bones ensures an almost unlimited supply. These resourceful practices extend to other aspects of their infrastructure and requirements, facilitating their self-sufficiency. Organic materials such as hardened skin, fibrous plants, and other naturally occurring substances are woven, treated, and combined to create items like clothing, furniture etc.
Common terms :
Immortalis - They were a highly advanced civilization that mysteriously disappeared. The Circle of One, the name of the city in which the One live, is a ruin. Besides the Vaults where the One discovered the cloning vats and the black pyramids, nothing else is undamaged. In some parts of the city there will be automatic defences (drones, machine guns etc) which protect it. That's the reason the One never explored all of their city.
The Circle of One - The name of the city in which the One live, is a ruin. Besides the Vaults where the One discovered the cloning vats and the black pyramids, nothing else is undamaged. In some parts of the city there will be automatic defences (drones, machine guns etc) which protect their area. That's the main reason the One never explored all of their city. The city is surrounded by a huge dome that acts as a defence against the terrible living conditions on the planet.
Teeken stood on a rocky outcropping just outside of the Nest, and looked out into a desert with more than human eyes. Her eyes were evolved for night and distance. She saw, she swore on some clear and sharp times, almost to the bending of the world, and past it into the void of space, where long before the supplanters had come. But this was not really possible. Her sight, specialized and focused as it was, did not see quite so far. Even on the very clearest and sharpest night, when she'd freshly eaten little brother and slept plenty the day before, the furthest her eyes saw was to the outskirts of the city the humans called Neo London, where it sat fat and sleeping on the horizon. Teeken did not know this is what it was called. In the half-spoken, half-pheromonal language of her species, the Ura'eek, this city was named The Place Where Sickness Landed.
Teeken was a native to Gilt, and one of the few still alive.
She was young. She was old, by human standards. But she was young for an Ura'eek, only seventy. She'd lived in this place her entire life, for the Ura'eek only migrate when it's time to reproduce, and her Season has never come. It should have come by now and this worries her deeply. It troubles her enough to pull her constantly, like tonight, out of the tunnels and shallow caves her clan lives in and make her take the long crawl to the surface and gaze pointlessly at a poison city on the horizon. Deep down, she thinks, she blames them. The word "human" is not in the Ura'eek vocabulary; none of them have ever spoken to a human face-to-face, and this one only knows awful rumors about what they look like. Teeken has a close friend (who also happens to be her mother- but that's hardly important) who says that the supplanters are huge, four-limbed mutants. She says they're missing shells so they have to make a second layer of skin to wear. She says they can speak to your blood and change your shape into something else. She says they were born in the stars the day the gods spilled poison onto the night sky, made by accident. The word 'poison' always comes up when the supplanters are talked about. In Ura'eek language, the pheromones they release play as much of a role as the spoken sounds, so no exact translation can be made for anything they say. But the closest rendering of the Ura'eek word for humans might be The Poison-Breathers That Fell Out of Night and Take.
She let her black carapace feel the desert wind. Her eight legs twitched with pleasure.
An odd sensation struck her. Something was wrong. She isn't sure which sense told her, "look up," but one did, and she obeyed, and in the tapestry of the night sky she suddenly saw something opening up which was a terror to her kind. It was a myth, a rotten omen. The Sun At Blind Midnight was suddenly shining over her head, the same one that her forebearers saw three centuries before which had heralded the coming of the Poison-Breathers. It was too much brighter than the day sun. Her sensitive eyes went blind, and she thrashed. She lost all her oreintation and screamed. She understood its name. Across the city of Neo London, humans would be looking up and saying "It's the Gateway! It's open!" But here Teenek was horrified. Her first thought: What did I do to have to be the first one to witness this?
It would be her job to tell the others in her nest. She would be renamed by it. Seeing something so big and mythical, it would become her identity in the eyes of the others. They might kill her. A Mouth Bringing Bad Things.
What did I do to deserve this?
She wanted to pray. The gods heard the Ura'eek. But in all the writings, the gods had never heard just one of them. Prayer was a communal thing, something you did with your nest. It required hours and the use of your bodies, as you danced and spun around each other in special patterns that signified your needs, leaving traces in the sand. She knew the patterns by heart. But she could not go to face her nest now, with this black news in her stomach. She needed... she did not know, but she needed something first. Something she could bring them so they would not be angry with her for witnessing this.
Taneek's sight was slowly coming back to her. So she crawls from her rock perch and lets her legs sink into the sand. It's course, and rough, and it'll stick to her when she returns. This place here- outside of the cave system they nest in- is where the rituals usually take place, with a minumum of a hundred participants. The gods do not hear one. Still, Taneek walks herself into a wide place, and begins the ritual motions. She dances as if there are partners there when she knows there are not. She dances with her imaginary clan, and hope the gods take pity. Alone, one alien spider spinning under a sighing and pained sky. A prayer. The waves and bends of her body are a plea for help. The gods, the teachers, let them show us another way, let them restore what is lost, let them make new again what is old, let them, let them, let them...
"What have you learned?" a gentlemen representing Oldwell Conglomerate leaned back in a leather chair. He was tired, but invested in this conversation. He had let this professional spy into his Rainbow onboard apartment to hear it.
"Most signals around here are encrypted," the corporate spy answered, "but there's a few juicy bits you can pick up on that aren't too protected. And the diplomats and politicians are always too willing to talk, of course. The comings and goings of ships are a language all their own." This spy was a sym, one based on a long-gone human. He still wore a layer of synth-skin to look like the dead man who's mind he had.
"What's all that tell you?"
"You're looking to sell weapons, right?"
"Defensive purposes only- stop waffling, sym. Who do you think is going to buy from us?"
The spy hesitated visibly. "Sir, we're still new to this game. Please be patient. But there is one nation- the FRA, Free Republic of Americana. They've been fighting a neverending war with an alien threat for decades, and nobody has a clear enough advantage to win. The aliens took their homeworld, even. But nobody is getting any further than that. Stalemates create desperation."
"I heard about that, I think. You have reason to suspect they'd want an edge?"
"If I may?"
"You may."
"I have reason to suspect them and the aliens both would. Their weapons are probably about as advanced than ours, baseline, but I think we can produce faster. I don't believe they have an equivalent to syms nor stamps, and all that makes our labor cost almost nothing. Cheap wins wars, too."
The Oldwell representative's eyes went wide. "Did you just say we might sell weapons to an alien invader?"
The spy shrugged. "I believe I said that we might sell to both."
The representative awkwardly shifted in his seat. But when he failed to say 'no,' the spy prompted: "So, should I begin to draft a message to them, sir? The other corps will need to sign off on this."
Hail,
From across the Gateway, we have heard stories of a divine race. It seems that a society of faithful individuals such as yourselves were betrayed by a dishonest nation, and though you succeeded in chasing them from your beautiful planet of Columbia, they remain active on the outskirts. Such a conflict is always sad to see, and we would be very glad to aide the most righteous side. We have created serviles capable of producing goods- including weapons, armors, ship components- at a much accelerated rate. Both the goods and the serviles can be traded, should we find new, worthy partners.
Having heard your story, we are certain we have.
Sincerely, The Gilt Division
Greetings,
From across the Gateway, we've heard tragic news about a fellow human nation, mistreated and driven out from their homes by aliens. As a people who have always strived to maintain our humanity in the face of an uncaring universe, we were moved by sympathy to hear your story. It appears you and the aggressors are at a stale mate; well, we would like to help you break that standoff. We can provide weapons and armor to your forces at low prices- we may be corporations, but for a good cause, we know that it is worth discounting things.
Current RP I want you to join: https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/191461-caravan-an-episodic-fantasy-with-worldbuilding-always-accepting/ic
Hey y'all. I've been at this for about 10 years, and I've played a lot of kinds of RP. I like fantasy and sci-fi the most, just because they give me the most to play around with, but I'm cool with almost anything. I just like writing.
(I'm also trying to slowly break into writing as a profession, but apparently that's not enough work for me, so I'm here too. I'm starting to think this place is just where I get out all my bad ideas)
[CENTER][URL=https://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][IMG]https://www.nodiatis.com/pub/8.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/CENTER]
<div style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Current RP I want you to join: <a href="https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/191461-caravan-an-episodic-fantasy-with-worldbuilding-always-accepting/ic" title="https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/191461-caravan-an-episodic-fantasy-with-worldbuilding-always-accepting/ic">roleplayerguild.com/topics/191461-car…</a><br><br>Hey y'all. I've been at this for about 10 years, and I've played a lot of kinds of RP. I like fantasy and sci-fi the most, just because they give me the most to play around with, but I'm cool with almost anything. I just like writing.<br><br>(I'm also trying to slowly break into writing as a profession, but apparently that's not enough work for me, so I'm here too. I'm starting to think this place is just where I get out all my bad ideas)<br><br><div class="bb-center"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener" href="https://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm"><img src="https://www.nodiatis.com/pub/8.jpg" /></a></div></div>
Member
Expendable
Sylvan
MrSkimobile
Timemaster
Izurich
Abstract Proxy
Vixere
PrinceAlexus
Fetzen
