[center][h1][color=MediumBlue]Beyond the City Walls[/color][/h1][/center]
[center][h2]The Story[/h2][/center]

	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. [i]The[/i] 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.

[h2][center]RP Gameplay/The Story As of the Start of the RP[/center][/h2]

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
[list]
[*] 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.
[/list]

	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.

[center][h2]Character Sheet[/h2][/center]

[list]
[*][b]Name[/b]- The character's name. This can be their full name, the name they go by, or in conjunction with some title they might have.
[*][b]Age[/b]- The character's age. Pretty much a given.
[*][b]Gender[/b]- The character's gender, if they have one.
[*][b]Faction[/b]- Currently between Sector Nine, Sector Three, and City, though others may show up.
[*][b]Appearance[/b]- The character's appearance. Be as verbose as you want, honestly, the more you want to describe your character, the more power to you.
[*][b]Starting Equipment[/b]- 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.
[*][b]Personality[/b]- 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.
[*][b]Skills[/b]- 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.
[*][b]Requests[/b]- 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.
[/list]

[i]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.[/i]

[center][h2]Conclusion[/h2][/center]
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!