ZacksQuest

Beyond the City Walls (Surreal Apocalypse RP)

Oh, I'll definitely be accepting characters and new participants essentially indefinitely. Even condensed to about a handful of set locations and only one large, ever-changing location, and a few societies and factions, it's a fairly large setting. You can even feel free to make more than one character in all honesty, if you want to!

Beyond the City Walls (Post-Apocalyptic/Surreal Horror Survival RP)

@CallMeChaotix @TheMadAsshatter @Sypherkhode822

You can honestly create whatever names you want for the characters. Some characters go by normal names from the cultures or places on Earth they were from before it was taken by the City, but for the most part names' functions vary depending on where in the City, and what the purpose of names are. If it's from a Sector that boasts individuality and expression, you can go wild with the name, or if it's a name the character gave themselves.

A Constant escaping the control of a Constant is by far not unheard of. Usually, if you play a non-Servant Afflicted working under a Constant, it's not too hard to escape from the Constant's willpower, even if you couldn't survive fighting the Constant (which, probably, you wouldn't be at first). Servants usually aren't Afflicted enough for the Constant to be powerless over them mentally and honestly some Constants rely on less mental methods of control, and other Servants just want to serve the Constant. But if you're Afflicted, as in really Afflicted, you're granted quite a bit of immunity to a few things even if "not being mind controlled or tracked" is the only one on a short list that really counts in fighting against the Constant. And yes, a Constant can be killed by an Afflicted or a small army of people but it's nigh impossible. Especially since not all Constants are created equal. No spoiling possible plot points but essentially one Constant can be the embodiment of a major human emotion, or have skillsets that make it godlike on a tier beyond others. Without going too far into it, one is the embodiment of the afterlife, the human concept of religion, and the inhuman concept of reanimation. Indigenous wildlife is more an expression of the creatures the City creates, but animals probably have entered the City and the ones that aren't dead by this time or become Afflicted probably never will be.

And as far as Advanced Roleplay goes, the only few things that requires is a bit of a more detailed and descriptive character sheet, keeping track of your abilities and the stuff you have as well as just trying to fit in your character and the world best you can, and being a bit verbose. If really nothing's going on, you can do what you may to fill up time or keep it a little more brief, but really it's only a small handful of things.

I'm going to be back and ready to begin the RP in earnest after Boxing Day, and will be taking and approving characters indefinitely from that point forward, but if I don't reply with my approval or message you with suggestions or questions, it's because I'm currently on a brief vacation. But it looks like there are enough people interested for the RP (which, admittedly, yes, I did begin already) to begin in earnest after that.

Beyond the City Walls (Surreal Apocalypse RP)

Bertram Connelly

Name- Benjamin "Bertram" Connelly
Age- 31
Gender- Male
Faction- Sector Nine
Job- Council Member (Retrieval Squad Supervision)
Appearance-
Starting Equipment- One Beretta 92 FS, one combat knife, tan shirt, jeans (old, fairly worn down), boots (utility boots, not combat, equally worn down)
Personality- Bertram Connelly is a man who has seen and expected the best in people and eventually lost his faith in anyone. Originally one of Sector Three's "war heroes", he started out as just a travelling mercenary, when he settled down in the Sector, which was at the time of his arrival small and fairly weak. So when he was asked to work as a Retriever and, later, a Hunter and Soldier both, he thought he could find a place that was- at the time- responsible for nothing. So he helped out the Sector, helped them gather supplies from Caches and assisted them, making sure to plan out strategies and every single possibility so that not a single Retriever or Hunter would be lost to the City, and constantly trying to cheer up his teammates and keep morale for them and the Sector high. So it was a big, unwelcome shock to him when he learned that leadership had tainted his name and used the few years of immense work he helped with as propaganda to tout the supremacist edicts that the Sector lives by today. Bitter, he fled the Sector and moved to Sector Nine, where, even though he wanted a simple, unassuming life, he was brought into the Council as the Retrievers' supervisor. He's consistently torn with his attitude of motivating and helping out the people working with and under him, and his realization of what that made out of the last people he tried helping, causing him to flutter back and forth, almost instantaneously, between congratulatory and cynical, even if he's not good at the cynic act.
Skills- Trained with small firearms, adept with combat knives, quick reflexes, ability to empower and motivate people, persuasive speech.
Requests- Don't kill this character unless you have permission to do so.

Beyond the City Walls (Surreal Apocalypse RP)

Beyond The City Walls

Accepting new characters at any time! However, certain jobs or groups in the factions are limited, so speak with the GM if you have any questions on alternate jobs or groups that work with the play style you want.

While all factions and jobs are open for you to use, since you can have multiple characters running at a time, having one character in either Sections Three or Nine, particularly in Retrieval, Hunter, and Council positions, are recommended as it will give you a character that is more closely connected to the story.

It feels so long ago since the City overtook our lives, made us into what we are today. Frightened, afraid, willing to give up our humanity believing no matter what we would find a real life or a way out. What a laugh. There is no way out. Only acceptance that we're trapped with It, and It wants its playthings all in line.

Story Thus Far

Prologue: End of the Beginning

Prologue: End of the Beginning

It began almost 100 years ago, when the City first ever appeared on the planet, what looked like a single block of it in the middle of a cornfield in central Nebraska, the owners of said cornfield brutally butchered by beings that, according to a number of less-than-reputable witnesses, were made of shadow. Over time, the City grew, other instances of it appearing all over the world, doorways that were not there before leading into the City. No matter how much the planet and the humans that weren't already taken tried to react, the City grew, and people were brought in either by trickery or by force. 100 years later, if there is anything left of the old planet Earth, the survivors in the City don't know about it. In an unnatural and sentient world that is filled to the brim with the unnatural, surreal, and monstrous, where the very City itself can change its layout, its geometries, and even the laws of physics and reality itself within its seemingly endless borders, the people living in it have had a toll taken on their already fragile sanity.
Across the City there are safe zones, places where all but the most powerful and sentient of creatures may willingly enter, where the City itself cannot even alter it. These safe areas, known under the umbrella term Dead Zones, became the grounds for all larger human settlements, known as Sectors, eking out a living through the supplies and food the City itself leaves for them, like treats for pets inside a cage. Other humans try working in nomadic groups, or even wandering the endless City streets alone, but most of them are set upon by the Shadow Graphers and other dark beasts that reside within the City, or are forever lost until they waste away and are absorbed into eternity. But even for those who have hollowed out a living, life is a bleak, continuous reminder that there is no hope to escape, and no hope to die having lived a truly worthwhile life. While many of the Sectors have fair systems in place and cling to humanity, many others have gone the path of slavery, masochism, destruction, and even worship of the City and the more godlike beings within its walls.

Chapter 1: Sector War (Current Point)

Chapter 1: Sector War

Sector Nine is known as one of the more successful Sectors in the City. A harboring place for a lot of former mercenaries, hunters, and raiders who wanted a better, more peaceful life, the elders of the Sector had passed down to their offspring and younger members of the Sector the art of stalking the City, hunting and evading the beasts within, and finding the Caches left by the City in its most dangerous places, and with it they amassed stockpile after stockpile. However, this has caught the eye of Sector Three. Sector Three is a society of people who have given up on retaining what remains of human decency, and opt instead for pragmatic action for what they perceive as the betterment of their society, using any barbaric means necessary, including experiments on humans using technology found within the City and slavery. Some of the members on Sector Nine's council used to be something akin to war heroes of Sector Three before voicing their disapproval and abandoning the Sector when it got too inhumane. This Sector claims that their former heroes are their property, and therefore their disciples, their stockpiles, and even their entire Sector is, by proxy, forfeit. While neither side is truly good or bad- many of Sector Three's citizens secretly defy their Sector's leadership and want peaceful trade between the two as gentle, sovereign Sectors, and some members in the Sector Nine populace simply want the Sector wiped out, alongside any others that act as anything short of allies to Sector Nine. More, still, simply want to study the City and learn more about the creatures and the location itself, which they see as their true enemy. Nevertheless, both sides' animosities towards each other are causing crippling setbacks in the Sectors. It has become harder to scavenge and hunt for either side, and it seems relations even with other Sectors have been strained or cut off entirely until the matter is settled. Nobody's sure how it's going to happen, but the thought is lingering in everyone's mind: there will be war.

The Setting

The City

The setting of Beyond the City Walls is in the aforementioned City. Doubling as a location and a sentient eldritch abomination in and of itself, it is rumored to be many things by many people, up to and including a living bubble in space, God itself, and a creature from another dimension, and nobody can prove or disprove any of these notions. As stated, the City has free autonomous will to change its layout, shape, geometries, and laws of physics and reality at will, oftentimes causing strange and unnatural formations in the City. It is also responsible for the production of new, unnatural creatures, the care of many other creatures residing but not directly made by it, such as the Constants and their Servants, and the absorption of any creature that dies within its active zones and any objects the person had on them.

Dead Zones and List of Sectors

The zones that are inactive and unable to produce the City's creatures or be changed in any way by the City itself are known as Dead Zones, and these spots act as the constrictive but safe locations for the surviving remnants of humanity, known as Sectors. Each Sector operates in its own unique way. Some make trade off of fine entertainments, others enslave and experiment, others still act in total anarchy, ruthlessly study the City, and many even worship the City and the Constants within it. However, the majority are sane representative governments led by a council that make their money off of scavenging and hunting beasts.

As of this point in the RP, the current known Sectors in the city are:

Sector Three - A Sector that traded in many of its peoples' civil liberties and human rights in return for supposed "absolute protection" from the City. While many members of the City, even within its bourgeoisie disagree, the direct leadership claims that the original members of Sector Three and their descendants are the "pure" humans, to whom the City cannot and will never touch, and that the only way of "purifying" people from outside those families comes from shedding them of their humanity and exploiting them by experimenting on them with artifacts or other things gathered from inside the City. Most of the descendants of the families and basically all the non-"pure" members of the Sector disagree, and want to change the Sector's methods and turn it into a gentle scavenging location. However, the same can't be said of all.
Sector Nine - A Sector whose council is comprised of some of the finest minds and retired mercenaries in the City, people who have tried to get out of the war, death, and retrieving businesses, and lived to tell the tale. While Sector Nine is a major superpower, most of the true value that the Sector receives does not come from the commodities and essentials that it gathers from Caches all over the City, but through the dozens of able-bodied young citizens acting as Hunters and Retrievers for the Sector, and the smooth-talking merchants who make the inter-Sector magic happen. A number of the more extreme citizens call for radicalization and Sector Nine supremacy, but for the most part the face of the Sector is the more benevolent face.
More Sectors will be added as the story continues...

Active Zones and Creatures

The City itself, in its active zones, have a number of horrifying creatures that it both spawns and lets live within its boundaries, almost all of whom either work in the interest of the City or are instantly hostile towards people. These include, but are by far not limited to:
Shadow Graphers - These strange creatures look at first like living shadows with white pinhole eyes and thin, grinning mouths. However, looks can be deceiving, because these forms are just the base state of the individual creatures, as they can attack by grouping together and becoming nightmarish beasts of varying shapes and sizes. Of all the creatures in the City, these are one of four that can be talked to, but only as messengers sent by the City or by a Constant. These Shadow Graphers can be dissipated and killed by any gun or ranged weapon, but it normally takes excessive amounts of bullets. Afflicted and fire or light-based weaponry can more easily and efficiently take down these creatures.
The Flock - Rumored to be creatures of the same ilk as the Shadow Graphers due to their shadowy appearance, these creatures take the form of birds, usually dozens to hundreds at a time, almost blackening the sky above them. Whereas Shadow Graphers amass to form creatures, The Flock can amass to form strong winds, lightning strikes, full on tornadoes and a variety of other catastrophic skyborn threats. They can also swoop down and attack individually, usually going for soft, necessary spots like the eyes. While light and fire based weaponry still do wonders against The Flock if it's in range, Afflicted are vulnerable to attacks to the eyes and usually they're too far away- or you're too busy being blinded- for you to use your gun. They're also just a tad bit invulnerable in their weather state, but usually it is a state they can only hold for at most a few minutes.
The Harmony - If you're a Retriever out in the City and you misheard something one of your partners say, chances are you're dealing with this slimy enemy. This creature rarely, in fact almost never attacks directly, and works by altering peoples' perceptions of reality itself, on top of an already endlessly shifting cityscape. It mostly alters your auditory senses but large clumps of it can change the way you see things as well. If The Harmony latches onto you or gets in your bloodstream, nothing save a nice long talk with a Constant can change the tides.
Tower Spawn - Tower Spawn are fickle creatures constructed by the City. Usually a conglomeration of flesh, rock, other composite materials and intricate, almost impossible clockwork machinery, these beings are usually given some level of sentience and a directive. A cross between a mannequin, a golem, and a robot, these creatures operate and are given abilities or functions that suit their purposes, whatever these purposes are. Pieces of Tower Spawn are mostly what Sector Three tries experimenting on people with.
Cacklers - Mostly these are nighttime creatures, so they rarely make an appearance in the day except in dark interiors or in underground systems. They look like normal parts of the City, street lights, cones, empty newspaper vendors, a fire hydrant, anything. They can either communicate (especially in the case of a street light with its three lights), but most of the ones that will attack you will simply cackle. They'll cackle and you won't know where it's coming from until it reverts to its original form, which nobody has ever really lived to see. If they survived the Cacklers at all, they ran like hell until they reached a Dead Zone.
The Afflicted - While most Afflicted retain ties to their group or Sector unless ousted, exiled, or were too far gone to retain humanity, Afflicted are merely human beings whose ties to the City and Constants have caused them to undergo physiological, psychological and a variety of other changes to the point that their humanity can either be in appearance only or lacking at all. When it comes to physical or powerful advantages, Afflicted honestly run the gamut and being Afflicted by the City is like playing power roulette, where the odds are you are at a combat advantage, but your status as a nonhuman gives you a lot of prejudice and outright contempt if you're not in a super progressive Sector. A separate post describing various Afflicted that show up will be created and updated when Afflicted begin showing up or characters begin undergoing the Affliction process.
The Constants - These are the biggest, baddest, and most dangerous creatures in the City other than, well, the City itself. Very few of these beings have ever been seen, none have been recorded except by word of mouth, but their influence is everywhere. Many Sectors fall due to their Servants or influences, many Sectors outright worship them, and a number of Constants seem to be brought up in the deepening mystery of the City. For the most part, The Constants are godlike in nature, almost impossible to kill but not completely impossible, with legions of Servants at their beck and call. They reside in Domains in the center of the City, Domains being the only parts of the City that don't look like a city, and rarely leave these nightmarish sections. They are more than sentient and more than capable of human speech, but making deals with one or trying to side with one is very dangerous and very likely to end in nasty consequences. Each Constant is unique and has their own set of skills, Servants, and even are said to represent humanity in its whole essence and even responsible for the City's consumption of the Earth. A separate post describing various Constants that show up will be created and updated if and when Constants are mentioned or arrive.
Many, many, many other creatures, too many to fully list (it truly depends on what the City can think up to throw at you), but the more recurring creatures will be listed here as it updates.

Creatures - Detailed Entries

Shadow Graphers (White-Eyed Variant) - The most recurring and easily spotted of the City's creatures. These act as the City's messengers, writing the messages in shadows on walls or in the air. Mostly, however, they're a pack creature, amassing in hundreds of themselves, sometimes fusing together to create hellish monstrosities at a moment's whim. Most Shadow Graphers are white-eyed Shadow Graphers, and aside from being able to fuse into something that looks large and menacing they really are close to the bottom rung of the ladder as far as threat scales go.
Appearance - They are created of a semi-translucent, black shadowy substance that the City creates from the shadows. They take a vaguely humanoid form, with an earless silhouetted gob for a head and long, slender proportions, akin to shadows cast against walls from an evening sun. Fingers long and reaching like claws, they can do some heinous things on their own to the unprepared, but with the prepared their flesh is something akin to tissue paper, or warm butter.
Abilities - They can mold themselves into shapes that appear large or intimidating and can move fluidly in the shapes they mold themselves into, acting and fighting well for the physiology they adapt to. They can be fairly fast and any direct contact with them allows them to slice where their shadowy flesh meets your skin on contact.
Weaknesses - Shadow Graphers have tissue density of, well, tissue paper, or sometimes a really strong one will have the density of lukewarm butter. They are among the single easiest creatures to kill and even though the shadows can reform, the things they create are diminished in size and power on an exponential level each time they're severely wounded.

The Flock
Description - The City's resident eyes in the skies, The Flock are essentially the next step up from Shadow Graphers. They are aerial embodiments of nature and darkness, in a manner similar to the Shadow Graphers with a few differences, the first and foremost being the inclusion of wings.
Abilities - The Flock can take to the skies and has incredible agility in the air with their shadowy wings. A group of Flock birds can fuse together like Shadow Graphers, but form instead into dangerous weather phenomena, like hail, lightning, and twisters. They can also merge with and enter a human being, using it as a living Nest that's symbiotically linked, but cases of this are almost unheard of.
Weaknesses - The Flock's tissue is actually weaker than a Shadow Grapher's, and a single bullet or arrow can burst a Flock bird. They're especially vulnerable to fire or exterior electric attacks. Though most importantly- once they transform into the weather phenomena and it dissipates, they're gone. The birds used in that transformation are dead.

Playing the Game

NOTE: This is the gameplay role of the game as of Chapter 1, and the scope, scale, and even ability to play as nonhumans or other creatures will change as the story progresses due to your actions.

Starting Gameplay Overview and Factions

In Beyond the City Walls's first chapter, you decide which faction your character(s) will reside in, Sector Three, Sector Nine, or City Wandering. All of the factions have similar goals- Sector Three and Nine both wish to uncover Caches the City hides, study artifacts or creatures from the City, and overall ensure that they win the (potentially) upcoming war with each other, while keeping themselves up. You can be whoever- a member of the Councils, a Retriever (someone who goes out fully equipped to find Caches and loot them), a Hunter (the same, but for the hunting of criminals, spies, and most importantly City-created creatures), a merchant, shopkeeper, repairman, soldier, or even just a plain citizen hoping to make it big and training up. With City Wandering, usually this is more disposed to families or small groups of merchants and repairmen or hired mercenaries than large colonies of people, and their stance on the Sector War is neutral, unless, well, you make it not neutral.

Aside from new plot points being thrown in at certain times, or potential plot points in any case, the story outside the general backstory revolves completely around your actions and interactions (being, well, an RP) and any plot points you come up with or want to hatch is up to you. Mostly the GM is just a silent watcher in all this. You want to find a Cache hidden in the City's sewers? Go for it, just expect the City to be a bit difficult. You want to make a living as a successful merchant? Go right on ahead. You want to be a spy committing some inter-Sector espionage? All the more power to you. You want to conspire against your own Sector? Well, you're setting yourself up for an exile-based ending, but go do your thing, the world is your oyster. You can play anyone from hardened, guns-a-blazing Retriever, to a Hunter who ends up being afflicted and becoming one of the things he or she hunts (you're going to have to PM me about becoming Afflicted, though, or siding with Constants- both plot points aren't fully integrated and it's a slippery slope towards OP-ism when dealing with such beings), to just a guy making a living repairing equipment or studying City creatures or researching. Or many of them at the same time.

Every character starts off with 500 Cells, the form of currency agreed upon by all Sectors and nomads.

Gear, Weapons, and Technology

All three current factions have the capacity to be fairly well-armed and well-equipped, this being a City that provides a number of items to its trapped inhabitants. All three also have their own respective strengths, weaknesses, and preferences. The type of gear includes:
Weapons
Supplied Ranged Weapons - Supplied ranged weapons include small pistols (anything from a Colt 49 to a Le Mat), short-ranged rifles, and shotguns. These weapons can be on your character immediately at the start of the game and you can list this on your character's character sheet.
Scavenged Ranged Weapons - Scavenged ranged weapons include long-ranged rifles (including sniper rifles), submachine guns, automatic weapons, and specialized weapons, like rocket-propelled grenade launchers and napalm throwers. These weapons cannot be on your character immediately at the start of the game, and depending on their firepower it might be very, very rare to find these within any Cache and any owned by the Sector are locked away somewhere, but merchants can come by trading these weapons if you have the coin.
Melee Weapons - Melee weapons include blunt instruments, such as baseball bats and lead pipes, small blades, such as knives and ice picks, large blades, such as (rare) swords and machetes, and chainsaws (however, chainsaws require a working mechanism and gasoline, and both of which are fairly rare commodities). You can have up to one large blunt instrument and two small blades as part of your equipment, or four small blades and no blunt instrument, but large blades and chainsaws and any other medieval-style weapons you can think of you cannot have at the start, and have to be scavenged in Caches or traded with merchants.
Explosive Armaments - While Molotov Cocktails and Kukris can be fashioned if you scavenge the right parts, proper grenades or explosives are almost impossible to find, and cost a small fortune in Cells or require being found in extremely dangerous Caches. However, it's not impossible to find these in the City. You can have up to one handfashioned one at the start of your character.
Clothing and Body Armor
Clothing - Your character can have any style of clothing, between jeans and a t-shirt to a hoodie and slacks to a full-on armorless camo vest to formerly expensive formal wear, and have this as equipment at the start of your character.
Body Armor - Body armor consists of protective gear, stab plates, bullet resistant vests, full body armor, and helmets. You cannot have anything above stab plates as equipment in the beginning of your character, the rest can be traded or scavenged fairly quickly, however.
Other Equipment - Your character can have other equipment on-hand at any time, including night vision goggles, binoculars, walkie talkies (if they even somehow work), maps, compasses (not set to point towards a Sector- you'd likely have to pay to have that done), or anything else of value. Your character can have any of these but in exchange would have to start with 300 Cells instead of 500.
NOTE: In addition, due to Sector Three and others' experiments on humans using Tower Spawn parts and other City artifacts, both your character or your characters' weapons and armor can be infused with some strange properties and some (usually unsuccessful) procedures have given some people working Tower Spawn limbs which are durable and a bit stronger than a person's, at least enough to break a wall and, as it is an inorganic hand, not feel anything. However, you'll have to PM the GM about giving your character these enhancements beforehand, or plan it out and accept the opportunity as it comes along.

Character Attributes and Jobs

Your character can pretty much be anything you want your character to be, and you can even double up on some certain roles that don't clash with each other. The many jobs can alter your play style or you can have a couple characters that hit each mark. The roles can be divided into three categories:
Combat-Oriented- These can include Retrievers (sent to loot Caches), Hunters (sent to hunt bounties or creatures), Soldiers, Mercenaries, and Civil Security / Sector Troopers. Anyone intent on starting trouble or searching the City itself better expect to have a little bit of combat.
Repair and Research Oriented - These can include Scientists, Repairpeople, Researchers, Medics, Nurses, or Record Keepers (which you can double with combat or political/social.)
Political or Social Oriented - These can include Council Members, Merchants, Spies, Messengers, Entertainers, Con Artists and any other job you can think of that doesn't necessarily Combat or Repair/Research based. You can "retire" from Combat and be one but you can't double up without leaving the Political/Social sphere to rejoin Combat if that's what you want to do, but you can double up doing Repair/Resarch. The sole exception are spies, who can still retain combat if they're infiltrating as a member of another Sector's combat-oriented jobs.

Now the job you give your character isn't the job you're set with. It's gonna be a difficult journey if you try the route of job changing but this isn't a mandatory character assignment. This is the college majors of the job system. You can even switch factions, but you're going to have distrust on one side and you're gonna be hunted by the other most likely unless you started out full City Wanderer.

Your skills reflect your character's abilities and actions and while you can technically build up skills better by trying to do them over a period of time, chances are a person who's good at seduction and merchanting won't one-shot an enemy sniper at 500 paces. Now I won't provide a set list, and you can technically be as specific as you want, but that means "Fluffy Wombler Kicking" and "Ability to Jump Back or to the Side From Anything" will be your overly specific... actually that latter one is probably a tad overpowered. You can make it jumping, small arms, speechcraft, entertaining, repair, mercantile, City navigation, politics, the world is, again, your oyster here. I'm going to say no more than about seven things, just because having 20 super skills is a tad excessive, overpowering, etc. And you can be powerful, just not shoot and kill twenty enemies while simultaneously playing the bugle powerful. Likely, if you get contacted by the GM or a co-GM, your job position being overfilled in your faction or having a few eyebrow-raising skills is the reason.

The Rules

IC Rules

• All forum rules apply.
• No graphic pictures.
• No explicit sexual or overly grotesque imagery. This is a surreal horror survival RP, and one of the three factions is big on slavery even, but certain things just aren't acceptable. There's bound to be killing and bloodshed, and maybe even romance, but know the limits.
• Be courteous to other RPers. Don't kill another person's character unless they've given you explicit permission to do so or they gave anyone the go-ahead OOC or by some other means that are explicit and blunt.
• This is a very, very open-ended RP. You can create and bring out plotlines and story points that can go somewhere if people choose to run with it or nowhere or somewhere at a later point in time, so it's almost impossible to "hijack" the RP if the RP doesn't want to be hijacked, but if your actions are deemed by a number of RPers to be harassment or in any way harmful to or detrimental to other RPers' game experience, then the chance of punishment exists.
• Highly encouraged that you have at least two paragraphs of at the very least moderate detail. I don't even care if you use fluff to stretch it out, fluff will be fluff.
• Decent or at least adequate grammar is expected, but a minimal number of grammatical errors are allowed, of course. This isn't your college midterm or thesis paper, and if published, purchasable novels get by having grammatical errors even after being combed over by an editor, then nobody's going to blame you for a few grammatical flubs.

OOC Rules

• Site rules apply.
• If you have beef with another player, have a series of questions, or anything else that could be potentially disruptive to OOC, take it to private messages.
• Be kind to other users. You don't know what they're going through, and even if they've done things that they're not proud of or continue to do things that they shouldn't be proud of, openly spiting them doesn't solve anything for anyone.
• If you have questions pertaining to the world, creatures inside it, other Sectors, or potential other parts of the world that don't necessarily pertain to any pressing current story arcs, feel free to have them asked on here and I'll answer them and probably update this post or the other posts to reflect it. It's not a spoiler, and it's more information for all the players to share. If you have a question pertaining to a pressing story arc your character's involved in heavily, or something you want to do involving your character, or a question you have involving your character, then PM me about it.
• Just don't be rude. Be respectful and decent to your fellow player. Outrage and spite are for YouTube comments.

CS Rules

• Do not start playing until you've gotten the approval of your character sheet from the GM.
• If the GM messages you with advice and suggestions, then the suggestions will probably strengthen your (albeit moderately high already) chances of getting accepted, and are done with only your enjoyment of the RP in mind.
• All rules relating to skills, the accumulation of wealth, and what items you can and cannot have at the start vary, but the rundown for quick recap or reference are:
  
  • You start out with 500 Cells (the City's equivalent of money), unless you have a piece of Other Equipment, in which case it immediately drops to 300.
  • As far as weapons go, you can have one blunt weapon, two small blades (unless you exchange one blunt weapon for two extra small blades for a total of four), one ranged firearm of the following varieties (small pistol, short-ranged rifle, shotgun), and one basic explosive (essentially just a molotov cocktail, kukri, or flashbang).
  • For clothing, you can have any type of non-armored, non-resistant clothing (except cold resistant), basic protection, and stab plates. Body armor, radiation resistant and heat resistant protective gear cannot be had on hand instantly.
  • You can have up to seven skills listed for your character.
  • You can double up on jobs in Combat and Research, or Social and Research, but only Entertainers, Con Men, and Spies can also double up with Combat jobs.
• Other than that, just be detailed about your character's history/backstory/skills/appearance and have fun creating your character!

Character Sheet

Character Sheet

Name- The character's name. This can be their full name, the name they go by, or in conjunction with some title they might have.
Age- The character's age. Pretty much a given.
Gender- The character's gender, if they have one.
Faction- Currently between Sector Nine, Sector Three, and City, though others may show up.
Job- The job (or jobs) that your character has in his or her faction. (Note: Some jobs may be limited in number of openings, in which case the GM will PM you with alternatives that still fit the game-play style you want.)
Appearance- The character's appearance. Be as verbose as you want, honestly, the more you want to describe your character, the more power to you. Alternately, you can put up a picture.
Starting Equipment- This is the equipment you want your character to start off with. Basic guns (starting from pistols to shotguns only in the beginning- if you want heavy duty firepower you fight your way to a Cache or trade for one) or melee weapons (up to short blades), clothing, any light body armor you might have (up to stab plates), and other basic pieces of equipment like night vision goggles, radios, or even personal effects your character takes with them.
Personality- The character's ideals about others, the City, philosophical things, likes, dislikes, habits, pet peeves, you name it. Whatever you come up with for your character so long as you show and tell.
Skills- Now everyone's got skills. Everyone and their grandma, so "Nothing special" won't work here. Mercantile, speech, good with firearms, crack sniper, great at traversing around the City, can throw a metal pipe through someone's chest, can punt a fluffy wombler two miles in any direction, whatever skills your character has just list them here. If it's something you think would not be a normal occurrence for a character in your faction, such as Affliction abilities or otherwise supernatural powers, you're gonna have to message me or someone about that. (May have up to seven, not counting Affliction abilities which may come later or other things which your character learns/adapts/takes on.)
Requests- These requests can be anything that you want someone to message you about first or things that you don't need formal messaging for. If you don't want to be Afflicted or become entangled with a Constant or some other group or creature, let us know. If you don't want your character to get killed unless asked first, let it be known. If you don't want your character to be hit on by guys or girls, or if you want exemption so people who don't abide by this request may get summarily kicked in the nether regions, then let us know. In the end this is a post-apocalyptic setting so there's got to be some suffering your character endures, lest this section of the character sheet essentially be the "Easy Mode?" section, but basic requests are all fine.

Beyond the City Walls (Post-Apocalyptic/Surreal Horror Survival RP)

It's all good, man. Thank you for being interested in it! I hope more people take an interest in it so the RP can begin to take off, but again, thank you so much!

Beyond the City Walls (Post-Apocalyptic/Surreal Horror Survival RP)

Essentially, gear is mostly the same as you would have it, although the system might be a tad complex. For the most part, the guns available are the guns that the City salvaged from the world it took over, things ranging from a simple Smith and Wesson pistol to a Heckler and Koch G11 to probably a dozen types of automatic weapons, though for the sake of brevity I will simply make it as such. Your gear is limited to four categories and each of those categories into a few different subcategories.

For instance, for armaments and equipment, you have weapons and ammunition, your armaments or clothes, and any other equipment you may have. For weapons and ammunition, for brevity's sake, it will just be split up into knives, blunt melee, knuckles, pistols, short-ranged rifles, long-ranged rifles, shotguns, automatic weapons, and explosives, missiles, and other such incredibly heavy artillery. Anything past long-ranged rifles is likely only to be found in the most dangerous of Caches or otherwise kept in some protected storage unit to use in emergencies or invasion (unless you're part of a Sector that cares not for rules or safety, in which case all the power to you). On top of this, you can of course have modified sights on ranged weapons as well as other modifications, and given the City's eldritch properties and the fact that some of the many creatures it boasts include Towerspawn, essentially golems made of intricate and unorthodox clockwork mechanisms and what seems like pieces of the City itself, as well as a number of other creatures that affect things around them, it's quite possible to end up with a pistol or rifle that does some crazy things. Exactly what it does depends on what goes into the weapon and what the properties are of the aforementioned unnatural modifier. Other than that, you have your normal attire, although stab-proof or bullet-proof attire is much harder to come by though you usually find at least one in almost every Cache. And as for other equipment, that ranges from night vision goggles to other things that could be useful in the City, but not necessarily attire or a weapon.

Now, as for the Afflicted. What an Afflicted is is essentially a human being that has either been exposed to some of the more unnatural parts of the City, a Constant, or something to the point where their physiology and psychology have been affected and morphed into something much more inhuman. For the most part, if a Constant incites this, it's trying to make you into some kind of Servant of it, and usually these Servants have the same general skillsets, but if it's the City itself, it's almost an ability, physiology, and self-control roulette. Obviously you state whether or not it's even a possibility, and you have control of what happens if your character ends up getting Affliction. It's generally irreversible unless you do something crazy like make a deal with a Constant, which is essentially the only way to undo either the Affliction fully or the negative aspects. But as far as the abilities that come with Affliction, it varies, but usually there's at least one or two inhuman aspects that cause the Afflicted person to become a very, very skilled combatant so long as the other changes aren't hindrances.

Now for the most part, there are five main types of creatures that roam the City proper, outside of Constants and their Servants and, of course, the Afflicted. In order from the most populous to the least likely to be seen, these include:

• Shadow Graphers- The aforementioned shadow people with the pinhole eyes and the slit mouth smile, these creatures are beings of habit and order. Some say this is what happens to humans who are absorbed into the City, and others say they're merely the heralds to the City and were never human. All that's known is that these are either simple messengers, or deadly vicious attackers that can fuse into each other to become things that are truly nightmarish.
• The Harmony- The Harmony is a strange beast. For the most part, it looks like a fungus or a growth that usually is on the ground or a wall. And it can completely override your perception and make you see and hear things that aren't actually happening. Some people, including all Afflicted or Constant-allied people, are immune to its abilities, but it's a dangerous, dangerous thing, especially if it gets onto a person. Then, they essentially are displaced from reality alongside anyone within a certain distance of them, unless, again someone makes a deal with a Constant.
• The Flock- Another hive mind of sorts. These are birds that will appear out of nowhere and almost darken the sky. They can attack as a swarm, going for the eyes or soft flesh, or they can themselves meld into things like a storm or lightning bursts or a veritable tornado. These creatures are vicious and without remorse, and if they are quiet but present it's because something worse is there and they're more than willing to watch the suffering commence.
• Towerspawn- Like I said, these are the City's clockwork and dieselpunk golems. Most of the time, these things are completely subservient, mindless, and only given set parameters of human interaction, but for the most part are more on the destructive side. But there are many Towerspawn more than capable of mimicking human interaction, having their own thoughts and personalities, and even leading or misleading people or Retrievers it comes across.
• Cacklers- Mostly these are nighttime creatures, so they rarely make an appearance in the day except in dark interiors or in underground systems. They look like normal parts of the City, street lights, cones, empty newspaper vendors, a fire hydrant, anything. They can either communicate (especially in the case of a street light with its three lights), but most of the ones that will attack you will simply cackle. They'll cackle and you won't know where it's coming from until it reverts to its original form, which nobody has ever really lived to see. If they survived the Cacklers at all, they ran like hell until they reached a Dead Zone.

These are not by any means the only creatures the City has to offer, these are just the ones that most often show up. Other creatures appear and can, at times, be more prevalent in an area than the normally occurring creatures.

Thank you for comparing this to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. by the way! That franchise, even moreso than the Fallout or Metro franchises, was the inspiration to sort of make this RP, on top of lovecraftian horror and just the tiniest bit of creepypasta thrown in for extra flavoring.

EDIT: And the answer to what happens in the City is that really, aside from it mostly taking on the form of a City, there is no limit. The street can pull an Inception and turn upwards and even fully upside down to where the street continues up and above your head almost in an impossible U-turn, manholes can lead to the rooftops, you can walk up walls in a section where the gravity is sideways and pray it doesn't change while you're up there. For the most part, the only sections that aren't city-like are the dominions and homes of the Constants in sections in the very center of the City, which vary based on the Constants' varied personalities, representations, and abilities, and even then it might just be because those dominions are the unnatural equivalent of their living spaces. Aside from Dead Zones, which include Sectors and the narrow paths that connect the Sectors, and the domains of the Constants, mostly because the Constants do not want it, the City is in control of itself and aside from its urban aesthetic being generally the same throughout except in these domains, it is absolutely in control of itself and how it functions and operates, and is known to change on a whim.

Beyond the City Walls (Post-Apocalyptic/Surreal Horror Survival RP)

Beyond the City Walls

The Story

It all started when, somewhere, in the middle of a cornfield in central Kansas, there were suddenly two square blocks of a city right in the middle. Nobody built it, nobody could explain it. Not even the people who owned the farm- they were found brutally butchered by something unknown. People said they saw shadows with pinpoint eyes and split, hairline grins walk out of the farm into the city blocks. People who tried to explore the inside of the city have never made it out. Even when two people are watching from different ends of a corner, the person inside the city vanishes when they rounded the corner. Then the city began to grow, and not just that one patch. More unbuilt city blocks grew everywhere, and doors began opening in homes, in entryways, in impossible locations, leading to the city itself. And when someone who disappeared in a doorway in Belgium found himself in northern Nagasaki, barely legible and certifiably insane, everyone knew it was one city. The City.

So, when the City began to spread, people started getting lost, mysterious creatures began to escape. There are many species of unnatural abomination recorded even before the City took control, from the shadow creatures with white pinpoint eyes to flocks of birds in the sky that can become storms and lightning, to seemingly normal city objects that reveal their true nature as something horrifying, to a mysterious fungus that grows on some of the City's walls that alters peoples' perceptions of what they see and hear. Other statements from the rambling few who made it out of the City intact in all but their sanity talked of other people in the City who morphed into grotesque monstrosities over a period of time, and mysterious, varied, godlike abominations that seem to run the show called Constants. On top of that, more terrifying than all these recorded and unrecorded nightmares, it's been agreed that the City is alive. The City is alive, and aside from some areas that it can't change, known as "Dead Zones", the City is more than capable of changing itself, shifting, breaking the very laws of geometry and physics itself, creating scenes reminiscent of Salvador Dali or surreal landscapes, all in an urban jungle style. It's easy to get lost in the labyrinths that are the buildings, streets, and sewers of the living City.

With all this in mind, as well as the horrifying fact that the City was growing faster than ever before, and soon it would overtake every square inch of the planet. There were revolts, wars, over land and property, while every scientific mind was focused on how to keep the City back. 100 years later, and it's unknown to the roughly 50 million inhabitants of the City, both wanderers of the living City and residents of the Dead Zones, if there's anything left of the world that once was, but what they do know is that even if there is, they'll never find their way back to it. The thing is, the City might be winding and it may be very hostile and unforgiving, but for some reason the City doesn't want its inhabitants to die. It supplies food, clothing, shelter, drink, and even some remnants of the world before, just enough so people either in roving groups or Dead Zones can survive and eke out a living.

In the City, the Dead Zones have been carved out by civilizations that have grown and have prospered, fallen, or morphed into something horrifying. No matter what the outcome is, these places are known as Sectors. Sectors have a variety of different ideals on how to cope with the City, everything from slavery to manipulating the City's inhabitants to bloody carnage on anyone and anything they can to even worshipping the City itself and the ungodly creatures in it. But even then, most Sectors, good and bad, have their leaders, either a council or an oligarchy or some sort of top brass, their merchants, scientists, researchers, entertainers, and their big three branches of City interaction- The Retrievers, teams of three to five people who go out and hunt for Caches, huge hoards of more valuable and better functioning things that the City leaves in some of its most hostile environments; Soldiers, armies of people who fight other Sectors or against the mysterious forces of the Constants; and the Hunters, people who go out and hunt down beasts that stalk the living City for sustenance, even, in some civilizations, the mutated creatures that were once human. With members of all these groups working in one Sector, there will be caches to uncover, new, frightening creatures to be met, wars to be had, and the mystery of why and what may even be answered with the coming of more afflicted humans who have become monsters and the mysterious Constants themselves.

RP Gameplay/The Story As of the Start of the RP

Essentially, what's going to happen in the beginning is just limited to three factions as of the beginning of the game, if only because if not then the factions would be spread so thin that nothing would really happen. So, as of the start of the RP, the factions are

• Sector Nine- A benevolent Sector led by a council of five or six seasoned veterans of the City that is home to some of the most pleasant people still left around, mastered in the art of Retrieving and traversing the living City to find the most valuable items to the point where among the however many Sectors there are, Sector Nine is considered a major superpower. Alongside messengers and merchants alike, the Sector is home to crack teams of Retrievers, who will go into the City and fight and claim the treasures inside the Caches.
• Sector Three- a Sector big on slavery and use of mysterious mechanical creatures of the City to upgrade and "purify" themselves, masters of their own right in creature hunting, barbarism, combat, and manipulating pieces of the City that can even be manipulated to their own benefit. On a moral compass, these people vary from cynical pragmatists who think this is what must be done in this new society, to people who don't like what's happening but are afraid of the consequences if they speak out or if the method stops, to people who outright take pleasure in it.
• The City- This is probably the broadest category you have. There are some nomadic, neutral parties who have just gotten good at traversing outside the Sectors or the Dead Zones that connect them, there are some people who live in the active City and even worship it, and you have the creatures of the City that aren't connected to Sectors, including Constants (although being able to play one of these godlike creatures requires a PM and teeters over the edge on acceptable power scale), the creatures that the Constants use to further their own ends (not nearly as powerful and technically you can get by with it), and the Afflicted humans.

Essentially what would happen then is that each of these factions do what they can to keep the faction on top or help it win over the other two factions, or, even, to find an equal ground somehow and learn more about the City and how they can escape or even stop it. This means Retrievers go on huge missions to, well, retriever, hunters do what they do best, the researchers and scientists try to figure out more about the City, the leadership tries to keep everything under control, and essentially other than that, just be the character and react as you would as the character. However, given the nature of the City where anything can happen to anyone, I might need some people I can confide in to, on top of any characters, post things as the City itself, whether it be its changes, a member of the Sectors becoming afflicted, any of the creatures in the City (and there are many, many types, enough that if you wanted to make one up within reason it probably would fly so long as the players can feasibly escape), or the City changing shape or moving about in some way. Just don't use the opportunity to buff up any of your own characters on purpose. You can play characters with abilities, like the Afflicted or the creatures that work under the Constants, but if you want to do that and be a member of one of the Sectors, especially if you want to have abilities right off the bat that are more than your average super skills, you'd definitely have to PM me about that as there'd have to be some leveling to make it fair and not just a power play of one-upping the other guys and being unkillable. That's just not cool.

Other than that, if you, whoever has taken enough time to get this far, want to take the story in a certain direction, say there's a certain Cache you want to find, a certain creature you want to hunt, or things you want to collect, or missions you want to do against the other groups, so long as you've got other people in your faction backing you up on it and wanting it to be a thing, or even if your character has the cajones to try to do it solo, then by all means go ahead and do it so long as it's not godmodding or something your character just can't do. Just know that whoever is the City can vary (within reason) between a rather benevolent City that's decent to the people walking inside it, to a deathtrap that's ready to throw potential near death experiences at you in a conga line of pain. All in all a lot of this RP is more or less teamwork and wanting the RP to sort of just play itself, and for people to keep it running and aside from plotlines or factions being added in if, fortune permits, the RP grows enough. Just like the City itself, the world and the Sectors and the characters should all be malleable and changing depending on what's going down, and that can vary from self-sufficient happy places trying to work together to full-on Game of Thrones styled carnage. So long as you've got another RPer's permission to kill off a character or you've got permission to do some crazy power obtaining or otherwise implausible yet possible situations, this could potentially be a fun time for everyone. A fun, hectic time.

Character Sheet

• Name- The character's name. This can be their full name, the name they go by, or in conjunction with some title they might have.
• Age- The character's age. Pretty much a given.
• Gender- The character's gender, if they have one.
• Faction- Currently between Sector Nine, Sector Three, and City, though others may show up.
• Appearance- The character's appearance. Be as verbose as you want, honestly, the more you want to describe your character, the more power to you.
• Starting Equipment- This is the equipment you want your character to start off with. Basic guns (starting from pistols to long-range rifles only in the beginning- if you want heavy duty firepower you fight your way to a Cache or trade for one) or melee weapons, clothing, any light body armor you might have, and other basic pieces of equipment like night vision goggles, radios, or even personal effects your character takes with them.
• Personality- The character's ideals about others, the City, philosophical things, likes, dislikes, habits, pet peeves, you name it. Whatever you come up with for your character so long as you show and tell.
• Skills- Now everyone's got skills. Everyone and their grandma, so "Nothing special" won't work here. Mercantile, speech, good with firearms, crack sniper, great at traversing around the City, can throw a metal pipe through someone's chest, can punt a fluffy wombler two miles in any direction, whatever skills your character has just list them here. If it's something you think would not be a normal occurrence for a character in your faction, such as Affliction abilities or otherwise supernatural powers, you're gonna have to message me or someone about that.
• Requests- These requests can be anything that you want someone to message you about first or things that you don't need formal messaging for. If you don't want to be Afflicted or become entangled with a Constant or some other group or creature, let us know. If you don't want your character to get killed unless asked first, let it be known. If you don't want your character to be hit on by guys or girls, or if you want exemption so people who don't abide by this request may get summarily kicked in the nether regions, then let us know. In the end this is a postapocalyptic setting so there's got to be some suffering your character endures, lest this section of the character sheet essentially be the "Easy Mode?" section, but basic requests are all fine.

Also, if you want to be able to play as the City for some posts at some given days in a week or month, then just say whether or not you'd be interested in knowing the rules of playing the City or being someone who would play the City at certain times underneath your character sheet.

Conclusion

So in conclusion after however many words, huge world, super malleable, the setting is alive, Lovecraft and Silent Hill have nothing on some of the monsters, and all in all it's a mostly self-governed RP of Cthulhu meets Walking Dead meets Song of Ice and Fire. If you've read the 10K character boring post on how this setting is and still want to take part, just let me know! In case this overview isn't enough, I can supply a larger list of the more common creatures or events that can happen in the City, but essentially the City is so infinitely big that anything can really happen. So, if anyone's interested, just let me know!

Gotham (Always Open)

((Too many reposts there, Padre. : T))

Mulling it over, The Bishop replies, "So you wish to assist us in the purification of the world." Thinking it over, he finally says, "So be it. It's a deal."

Gotham (Always Open)

Eviledd1984 said
"Well to be honest i cannot explain it but i could see though you like a open book Padre..." Guida finished his tea placing some money on the table and stood up walking over to him,"Now i came here to make a deal with you Padre..." He smirked at him his effeminate hands pulling out a handkerchief wiping his mouth before putting the handkerchief away in his coat pocket.

"...all right. State your deal."

Gotham (Always Open)

Eviledd1984 said
"To answer your first question my name is Guida and to your second question" The man paused for a moment taking a sip of his tea his wide smile into a smirk before speaking again."I knew of you and your friend and the little plan you had for the city...and honestly it was not hard to find you Padre" He said putting down his cup.

"Really. That brings me once again to that third question you've been evading- how did you see through my illusion?"