[OOC] The Prophecy

[Mercinus3]

@Mercinus3, @Ink Blood: How are things? Merc, still preoccupied with university? Ink Blood, have you mind up your mind on whether you're still going to play Salas or bring in a new character?

@Shienvien

I am still preoccupied with university, but I can get a post up today. M3

[Nib]

I recently began work on this new character concept. I'd appreciate anyone willing to read over it and give me opinions. Not sure if I'll replace Salas with this new character yet or not.

Felgrin

Name: Felgrin Caldwell Age: Recently turned twenty. Race: Human Gender: Male Religion: Felgrin worships The Wanderer. Appearance: At first glance, Felgrin appears to be an unsuspecting young man, being on the scrawny side with a thin frame and long legs. His face is long and pointed, causing him to have a long and thin nose with wide nostrils and somewhat gaunt features with high cheekbones and a long chin covered with a small goatee. Wavy hair of a light auburn color hangs down to brush the tops of Felgrin’s shoulders. His eyes are a pale blue color. Felgrin has very few sets of clothing, all of which look almost identical; he was plain linen shirts with long sleeves varying in colors of a faded grey to a dull brown and two sets of trousers a dark brown color with patches sewn on here and there. He also usually wears thick leather gloves and tall boots with strong soles. For protection from attack, Felgrin wears a thick leather vest that hangs down past his waist a good bit and a gorget made of a light metal that covers the tops of his shoulders and part of his chest. To keep himself protected from the weather and to distort his form in the night, Felgrin also wears a cloak dyed slate grey on the outside and a deep crimson on the inside.

Armor

Weapon(s): Felgrin carries a dark wooden crossbow with a crank for faster reloads and a dirk with a blade made of blackened steel with various runes carved into it, measuring one and a half feet, and a black handle with a pommel decorated with a single citrine gem. Skills: Felgrin is a skilled pickpocket, being able to dip his hands into someone’s pocket with a touch as light as a bird landing on a branch or cut someone’s purse and slip back into the crowd unnoticed. He is also able to manipulate most locks to open. Not only does Felgrin have a light touch, but he is also able to step lightly enough to sneak by most people and blend into the shadows without notice. Years of training have honed his abilities with his crossbow and his dirk, enabling him to hit his target skillfully at a distance and hold his own in close ranged combat with his dirk. In close range combat, Felgrin is able to employ his agility and nimbleness to dodge around, parry, and counter enemy blows. Training from his maternal grandfather has also equipped Felgrin with skills in Arcane Magic, focusing mainly on the illusionary abilities of the branch of magic, but since his training was never complete Felgrin has to employ the use of the runes carved into his dirk for most of his magic; he continues to study the art form the journal left to him by his grandfather to increase his abilities. He uses what magical abilities he does have to aid him in combat.

[Dark Jack]

Thus far the character concept seems fine, I guess, although it's still missing a background. My only immediate thoughts about the concept would be that the weapons (both of them; crank-operated crossbows are quite advanced weaponry in the current age of The Prophecy, and any weapon inscribed with permanent arcane runes is considered very valuable) must either have been very expensive or just difficult to acquire, in case he did not purchase them. I also wonder just how much skill Felgrin would have with magic, to be able to use the runes on his dirk at all? Even presuming that the black handle would be made from iron or a metal even more magically conductive than it, like copper, it would still be much, much harder to use than a true runesword or -weapon due to the lack of the magical crystal hilt. It would require conscious effort to direct magical energy into the sword as one activated the runes, and likewise conscious maintenance of the flow of magical energy to the runes to keep them active. Having the runes would still make using magic easier than doing so empty-handed, certainly, but I feel the need to point out that it would be a lot harder to use a runeweapon without crystal hilt than one with it.

[Shienvien]

From the image it seems to be a regular pull-lever crossbow, and not a crank-operated one? A crank-operated crossbow would be a cranequin crossbow, I'd assume... (As far as I know, the first indeed predated the latter ... by maybe half a century to over half a dozen centuries, depending on what regions to take account of - I found allegedly confirmed instances of pull-levers from the 5th century, whereas the cranequins were not really around before 13-14th century or so, now that I'm trying to find some information. Might be a better question for Legion, though I am not sure how much this falls under his part of history.) Ehh... But I may be rambling; it just seemed that there was a slight discrepancy between the descriptions and the image provided.

[Nib]

Thank you, Shien. I meant to say lever, not crank. The lever isn't attached to the crossbow, it's just used to pull the string back easier. AS for the dirk, I can change it to have a crystal hilt.

[Dark Jack]

Ah, heh, I didn't even check the images to be honest. Lever-operated crossbows would be a lot more common than crank-operated ones, that's true, and significantly cheaper as well. And you don't have to change the dirk if you don't want to, I just wanted to warn you that replacing the crystal hilt with one of a different material (presumably still a magically conductive metal, although organic materials could substitute these) would impact how low the level of skill required to use it would be. The average rune mage doesn't need to be able to control magical energy at all, whereas someone with a weapon like the dirk would need to be able to control and direct their energy-flow at will to be able to use it effectively.

[Nib]

Oh. Alright. I'm intending for him to have magical abilities, but not a lot since his training was never completed.

[Shienvien]

Eeh... This is the second time I'm trying to edit something and end up quoting it. But you're welcome, Ink. (Reminds me of the time when I, for whatever reason, ended up typing "six-barreled revolver" instead of "six-chambered revolver" into a charater-sheet, and never noticed it until it was pointed out to me... I swear I sometimes simply can't trust my own fingers to type what I actually think.)

[cthulu]

Seeing Ink Blood messing around with ideas has lead me back to the compendium. I'm so tempted to bring my Niin in as an NPC for people to meet/play with/be afraid of. Or some kind of demonspawn, or I might make them for my own amusement.

[Ashgan]

Yo. I'm around once again. I'll try my very best to get the next set of replies in faster than these last ones - one-month waits are far too long to be made a habit out of. At least I'm not halting anyone's progress aside from Jack, and he has multiple characters. Still, sorry man! Also, six-barreled revolver sounds kind of awesome in its own right Shien. ^^ Edit: Also, yeah, new avatar to conform to the 150x150 pixels rule; my old avatar isn't great for this since it's fairly low resolution, and has the wrong dimensions.

[Veridis Quo]

@Ink Blood: I like your character so far. My only complaint is that I have a bias against using the term auburn to describe hair (it's so over-used nowadays). Other than that I don't have anything I can comment on.

[Dark Jack]

Say Veridis, I've been contemplating what kind of encounter would make sense to enact to give you and Kaedan (and eventually TNY as well) something to do, but ultimately I feel that I need to know what Kaedan would actually do once he reaches the city in the first place? Since what he is doing and where he is going is going to majorly impact which situations he would feasibly run into and what people would take notice of him.

[Veridis Quo]

My character will head to the tavern for rest. Next morning he'll ask the guard or the military about the beast that took down the other city. If nothing happens to him by then, he'll stick around to help out the refugees until he decides to leave the city and move on. He's on a pilgrimage and trying to prove himself. If anyone from the main group told him that they were trying to stop the withering, he'd join up in a heartbeat. Right now I'm still waiting for nightfall to make up for the walking distance that he has to cover before reaching the main city.

[Dark Jack]

Yes, very good, much as expected. Hmm... One more question: which kind of tavern would Kaedan pick? The cheaper kinds where it's barely even clean, but you can spend the night for a single rodlin? The average-quality ones that are clean but unremarkable, that'll probably cost three to five rodlin? Or perhaps a nice inn with good beds, meals included in the price and warm water ready for a bath in the morning, but will cost fifteen to twenty rodlin for a night? EDIT: It has occurred to me that Kaedan, or rather Kaedan's brotherhood, would pretty much be the Fixer's wet dream; an entire faction dedicated to perfecting themselves in the arts of combat and warfare, for whom strength is the goal, not just a means to an end. He'd be downright giddy at the thought of how strong its members could be, and how strong they could become in time... and how much fun he could have fighting them before they broke. Poor Fixer... his toys all break so easily.

[Veridis Quo]

Cheapest in will do. He's on a budget, a corner to lie down in is enough. He has enough equipment to start a campfire as well, but I'll let him stay in the city for this one. What are Fixers again? They're not the guys who smell magic, I know that much.

[Shienvien]

@Veridis Quo: There is only one Fixer (that's why it is capitalized: it is a name/title given to that individual). He is the Grand Master's* tool and the person the other people in Zerul interacted with and Ixion briefly even fought; the general public and even most officials have no idea who he is or, for the matter, that he even exists. *The Grand Master is a demon lord. Posting order: Jack in Jillian's storyline and borderhouse collab. (And probably the encounter with Kaedan, too, though I'm still willing to take it upon myself as I originally offered, should you find yourself handling too many lines at once.) Legion in the other collab. Mercinus in Zerul. Unrelated: Are avatars broken for everyone, or just me?

[Ashgan]

Avatars busted for me as well as of this time.

[Rhaevnn Xeno]

I don't know if this is just for me, but when I went to go back to alter Morgan's CS a little (altered colors for his appearance, sticking to the lore of being a worshiper of The Wanderer and all that), the link kept redirecting me to the IC instead of the actual CS. Tried some of the older character's links as well and got the same result (however, the newer characters' links are fine). Just thought I would give a heads up. ^^; *Edit* And I think something with the avatars is being changed, as I too have no viewable avatars. :3

[Shienvien]

@Rhaevnn Xeno: The links (or at the very least some links) being broken is sort of a known issue. Others have encountered the same issue with absolute links to posts. Might point out that it seems to only occur with links from before the code update, though...

[Shienvien]

- Max avatar dimensions changed from 150x150 to 150x200 (150px wide, 200px tall) - You can choose an image larger than 150x150 and the guild will resize it to 150x200 for you (maintaining aspect ratio) - You must upload your old avatar manually to move it into the new system. In a week or so, I'll be removing all old avatars. If you go to your "Edit Avatar" form, you'll be able to access your old avatar so that you can conveniently upload it into the new system.

Well, at least we now know where the avatars went. On the sidenote, reply box now seems to lack formatting options, and the hint boxes don't seem to work... Oeh. Edit: And now they're back. Edit#2@Jack: It seems that you will need to replace the links to the earlier character sheets with ones from the chain-link symbols in the corners of the sheet-posts... (Next to "Wiew Raw" right-click and copy link address - if you just click it and then copy the address bar, you'll still have the broken links.)