[center][h1][u]The Sky and The Earth II[/u][/h1][/center] [center][h3][u]The Setting[/u][/h3][/center] Set in the magical world of Fiore, and more specifically in and around the city of Luna Crescente, our story will focus on the day to day activities of our heroes as they work towards their upcoming S Class examinations. This will be the story of two teams as they seek to make their names, gain their fortunes, and grow stronger together. A sizable village surrounded by a crescent shaped lake, Luna Crescente is a well established spot, not least because of the power of its guilds. Waterways flow freely alongside and under the streets, and the common folk are a highly festive bunch. Its position as a sort of crossroads between multiple major cities makes it a merchant paradise, leading to a comparatively sprawling business district with many specialized craftsmen. All this aside, the town is indisputably most famous for the fact that it houses two large Guilds: Harpy's Wing and Golem's Hand. The rivalry between these guilds over the last few years (and the hyperactivity of their members trying to best each other) has earned them recognition, respect and a bit of infamy. [center][h3][u]Harpy's Wing[/u][/h3][/center] [center][img]http://www.wallpaperhi.com/thumbnails/detail/20120307/tower%20fields%20green%20hair%20anime%20girls%20green%20dress%201400x900%20wallpaper_www.wallpaperhi.com_8.jpg[/img][/center] [center][img]https://i.imgur.com/QueCXrJ.png[/img][/center] By far the elder of the two Guilds in Luna Crescente, Harpy's Wing was founded in order to provide a home for those who have no place to call their own; a place to belong, grow, and prosper for orphans and outcasts, as well as anyone who shares their ideals. Harpy's Wing believes in expanding the strength of the guild as a unified force, and so encourages its members to find harmony between themselves and others. Situated just outside Luna Crescente, in the middle of the crescent shaped lake which gave the town its name, the Guild Hall of Harpy's Wing is a sprawling tower built into an ancient tree. Created in times long gone by the founder of the Guild, this living guild hall has never failed to provide lodgings to the ever growing Guild, and does not look like it will be full any time soon either. Affectionately known as 'The Nest', this is the heart and soul of the Guild's operations, and rarely will regular members be seen away from it for more than a couple of weeks at a time. [center][h3][u]Golem's Hand[/u][/h3][/center] [center][img]http://img1.ak.crunchyroll.com/i/spire3/9f6670b994aba97a4b674985955c8b851454005946_full.jpg[/img][/center] [center][img]http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/kingdomhearts/images/a/a3/Keyblade_Master_Emblem.png/revision/latest?cb=20100524095603[/img][/center] The 'New Guild on the Block' as it were, Golem's Hand was founded very recently in aftermath of a Dark Guild's assault on Luna Crescente. While Harpy's Wing was able to repel the assault after a hard fought battle, the town took significant damage during the ordeal. Founding themselves on a platform of being the sole worthy protectors of Crescente, Golem's Hand believes in the primacy of individual strength, with each strong mage representing another brick in the defensive wall of the town. They have high respect for the art of magic, but view it as more of a tool and focus on the strength of the body in order to avoid exclusive reliance on magic. Raised in the immediate aftermath of the Dark Guild attack on the town, the Guild Hall of Golem's Hand lives up to the name of the guild; not only is it built like a fortress, but from a distance it looks almost like a stone fist rising up out of the city. Built to temporarily house the entire population of the town in the event of another attack, 'The Rock of Crescente' is the gathering place of all townsfolk in the event of an emergency, as well as a common meeting place in the evenings due to its bar and the frequent public fighting displays and contests of the Golem's Hand Guildmembers. [center][h3][u]Character Creation and Post Expectations[/u][/h3][/center] Before I get onto character creation, I have a few simple things to keep in mind, as with most GMs. 1. Please don't be OOC rude to anyone involved in this. I take this reasonably seriously; IC insults/beef is completely fine as long as it doesn't translate to being toxic OOC. If you have any issues with other players in the game, please raise them with me before they cause problems for you or anyone else. 2. Play your character, not anyone else's. Any combat actions or decisions made on behalf of someone else's character (including not dodging attacks, or being generally inactive) without clear prior consent being given will be frowned upon. On the same wavelength, please don't God-mode or Metagame, we're all just here to have fun. 3. If you're going to make a potentially 'questionable' post (anything that might belong in a MA15+ film or beyond) please send me a message to confirm it's alright first. 4. Minimum one paragraph per post please, but do aim to be around 2-3 for most expository pieces. 5. Other than myself and any other individuals who will be running the NPCs in the future, please keep it to one character. You're welcome to introduce another if for any reason your character becomes unplayable or leaves the story, but only one at a time. 6. Each character can, as in the original, have a maximum of 2 magic disciplines. All custom magic will require approval before being allowed to join the story, but as long as it's not abjectly overpowered you'll probably be fine; it's how you write about the power that really determines how powerful it is. With that out of the way, here is the CS, taken closely from the original one: [center][hider=Character Sheet][center] [i]Personality Quote[/i] [h3]Basic Info[/h3] [b]Name::[/b] [b]Nickname/Alias::[/b] [b]Gender::[/b] [b]Age and date of birth::[/b] [b]Guild::[/b] [b]Rank::[/b] [h3]Personal Information[/h3] [b]Personality::[/b] [b]History::[/b] [h3]Magic[/h3] [b]Magic Name::[/b] [b]Description::[/b] [b]Known Spells::[/b] [h3]Other[/h3] [b]Relatives::[/b] [b]Posseions::[/b] [b]Theme Song::[/b][/center][/hider][/center] A copy of this character sheet (with the formatting included so you don't have to do it yourself) can be found at the following link: https://pastebin.com/akPxLiz6 [h3]Team Creation/Organization and Relationships[/h3] A key aspect of this, moving forward, is that the two teams have to be able to function. Not perfectly to begin with, perhaps, but characters need to be functional enough in groups to work in teams. Once characters start getting approved, we'll start talking about how the teams will work: what's the leadership structure like, how are important decisions made, who has been in the team longer/shorter, what are the group dynamics like? All these things and more will be discussed before we get into IC work properly. Additionally, I'm bringing back a thing from the last thread, which is the Relationships section for each character. Please have a look through the Character thread [url=https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/91053-ft-the-sky-and-the-earth/char]here[/url] to see what I'm talking about. For a character to be approved to be posting in the IC thread I'd like to you have a listing for at least 50% of the other approved characters. As you can see it's only a couple of lines each, but it really helps people get to know each others characters, as well as making sure that people know where they stand with each other. I personally had a lot of fun reading through these, and I think they're an excellent addition; I hope you will too! ----- Finally, I can't stress enough that if you have any questions, requests, suggestions, or queries, you should feel completely fine coming to talk to me about them; my inbox is open for all of you! Hopefully we can have a great time together in this wonderful world of Fiore! [hr] [hider=Important Info] [center][h1]Important Info: Mod Posts, Mod Mechanics, and Expectations[/h1] With the IC stuff about to kick off, it's important for everyone to be on the same page about how I will be running this particular RP thread! As most of you will have noticed by now, I'm a big fan of ordered things, so there will be a generally recurring set of things that will be cropping up in my posts that I figure I should lay out here to make sure everyone is clear on what is going on. [h3]Mod Posts[/h3] In order to avoid the cardinal sin of doubleposting as much as possible, I will be dividing my mod posts up into segments. The first segment will be the actions of NPC's and environmental effects that affect the members of the Harpy's Guild team. The second segment will be the same for the Golem's Hand team. Finally, the third segment will be the actions and perspective of Illedrith. At the top of these three segments will occasionally be an OOC instructions section which directly pertains to the contents of the post. This might contain information about which characters are visible to which other characters, which characters are in the position to potentially find an object that they're looking for, any special information that might be available to one or more of the characters, etc. I hope to be progressing the story by making NPC action posts at least once every couple of days, but obviously if nothing has happened for one of the guild teams, their segment will be omitted. I will also be attempting to wait until all characters who are actively involved in the scene have had a reasonable chance to respond and act before I post up the next NPC post for their group. This will mean occasionally just writing NPC posts for one group or the other in isolation, but hopefully we'll be going at a reasonable enough pace that I can just group it all together for ease of reference. From a formatting perspective, a solid horizontal line in the middle of a segment represents that the time, place, and active NPC group have changed. A dotted horizontal line means that the time and/or place has changed but it's still the same NPCs. A line of tildes (~) means that the time and place have not changed, but the active NPC group has changed. Any further recurring notes for this will be added to this post (which will be added as a hider to the first post in the OOC tab). [h3]Mod Mechanics[/h3] In character creation I mentioned that I would be explaining how traps work. Well, here I will be explaining that as well as a bunch of other mechanics that I'll be using to shape how the story goes and make sure that there's a reasonable amount of challenge and equality for all characters as they go about their travels in Fiore. [b]Traps:[/b] Everyone's character is a wonderful, observant, fantastic trap spotter if given the chance. Unfortunately that's boring as hell and also unrealistic, since everyone's character is also a wonderful, stealthy genius who can make a bear trap look like a small puddle. As such, here is how traps work: if your party is walking into an area where they [i]absolutely know there will be traps[/i], such as them actively hunting a person who they know uses traps, and who they know is aware they're after them, then you can potentially spot all the traps and avoid them. The same goes if you're in a place where you would usually consider searching for traps (dungeons, ruins, the houses of wealthy people etc.). If one of these conditions is not met, and someone has in fact set up traps, at least one of you is going to get hit by a trap. I will ask the team leader what the marching order of the group is, and then let the players know that in their posts they're going to stumble into a trap that they didn't see. It's then up to them to deal with how that works in their post. As such, if you're a character with traps and you're planning on trapping an area, let me know in advance so that I can make any requisite preparations for it. Of course, once someone has set off your first trap, they're much less likely to get caught by a second or third one, but they then simply become obstacles for you to potentially use to your advantage in combat (knocking people back into them, making your enemies take tactically disadvantageous fights to avoid the traps, etc). [b]Object Hunts and Stealth:[/b] Similar to traps, hidden objects and hidden people are difficult to fairly adjudicate without dice and stats, so unless the story calls for something specific, the following will apply: A hidden character is impossible to find unless a) your group has a reason to suspect that someone is hidden nearby, b) you are actively looking for them, and c) you have a general idea of where they will be. There may be situational times where this will not apply, but that will be at the discretion of the relevant parties or for the purposes of advancing the story. For both finding hidden individuals and objects, having fulfilled the three requirements, I will put in the OOC section of the post which characters in the group are able to find the object or person, and whether or not there will be any specific reactions or effects when they do eventually find it. This list will be pseudo-arbitrary based on where people are looking and whether they have specific skills that would help with searching. [b]GM Combat Text:[/b] On rare occasion, I may be required to exercise my GM powers to make some overarching decisions in fight scenes that to some extent will impinge on your pseudo-inviolable right to absolute control over your characters. This can be for story purposes, to make the fight more interesting, or simply because you've been 'A Bad' and have been abusing the leniency in the written text form and haven't been giving your opponent's attacks the respect that they deserve. The more epic (and by epic I mean close, and interesting, not an epic curbstomp unless you're overpowering complete mooks) you make your fights, and the better you respect the skills and attacks of your opponent (whether PC or NPC), the less I will need to intervene with these powers; optimally I won't have to use them at all! They work as follows. When describing an action, if I deem that the way it needs to be interacted with is special, I will colour the action text a certain way. If it is a named attack, I will simply colour the attack name. If it's something else, like an environmental effect, physical attack, or anything which falls outside an easily named event, I will colour the part of the action that needs to be reacted to instead. For example: '...the gathered power in his hands suddenly burst forth and ravaged the area in front of him. "[color=0072bc][Ravaging Shockwave][/color]!!! Fall before my might!"...' '...the explosions triggered a huge collapse further up the mountain, bringing down an [color=ed1c24]immense cascade of snow and rock onto the heads of the collected Harpies.[/color]' The colours mean the following: [color=0072bc]Blue[/color] means that this is an exceptionally powerful attack, and should be treated as if it is as powerful as your trump card. React to it as you would want your own most powerful spells to be reacted to, because that might just happen. [color=ed1c24]Red[/color] means that if you are the target, or in the path of this attack or event, it will hit you. Whether by skill or happenstance, this attack lands some level of damage on your person, proportional to how well equipped you are to handle it. Other than the requirement that it lands some level of damage, there are no further stipulations on this; how severe the damage, and how your character handles it are entirely up to you. [color=662d91]Purple[/color] is a rare combination of the two above colours. It will be almost exclusively reserved for important fights with powerful NPCs, and represents a powerful, undodgable attack. This will typically be the point in a traditional Fairy Tail fight which is the turning point before the true heroics and underdog fights happen. Finally, and most rare of all are [color=aba000]Gold[/color] events. Whether for story reasons or personal reasons, a this attack will have a certain set of people it's targeted at, and it will without question remove them from the fight. Depending on the situation this could be anything from knocking them unconscious, to trapping them completely in ice, to teleporting them far far away from the fight, all the way up to complete molecular disintegration. It is important to note here that unless you have previously had discussions with me and approved of it, I will never put your characters in a place where they must permanently die, have faith that there will always be an out if you want to keep them alive. If you are planning on having your character die, do send me a PM asking about how I tend to have death scenes play out, because during them you gain essentially executive power over all NPCs to play out the death as you see fit. I shall at this point reiterate that these will hopefully not have to be used often, if at all! If we're all on the same page about what makes writing, reading, and being part of a story entertaining, I won't need to be intervening at all because you'll all be treating the NPCs and each others characters with the respect they deserve, and we'll have super kickass fights because of it. If you have concerns or issues with this, please do tell me and don't feel concerned that I will be displeased! As I've expressed to some people here already, it's important that you make your opinions about my decisions clear, so that I ensure that I'm taking the thread in a direction which my players are happy with! No question or concern is too minor or too silly for my inbox if you feel it's important to you. [h3]Player Expectations[/h3] Just a quick section as a reminder to you all about what I'm expecting when it comes to post quality, content, and frequency. I'd like most of your posts to be at least two paragraphs long, with a hard minimum of at least a paragraph per post. See my expectations and guidelines on the first page for specifics of what I would expect to be present and absent in your posts. As for frequency, I will be aiming to progress the NPC storyline at least once every 1-2 days, but that means that all individuals who are actively part of the scene (part of the conversation or in combat with the NPCs, or otherwise performing an action that needs moderation) need to be reasonably on the ball when it comes to ensuring that they have their posts in on time. If you don't have time due to life getting in the way, I totally understand, just please let us know in advance if possible so that we can write around you and you can rejoin when you're able! This also extends to just letting us know to move on without you if it's been a couple of days and you're not going to be able to post up in time. Just catch up when you can in the aftermath, but please don't make the rest of your team wait around for you to post if you aren't able to make a post in time. Other than that, please do stay in touch with me for anything that you'd like to happen to or for your character. If there are particular NPC interactions that you'd like to happen, or you have a storyline from the backstory of your character that you'd actually like to introduce partially or completely into the main storyline of the thread (I know there are a couple of you already), please do tell me if there is a good time for it to happen. I'm always open to having some of the nameless, faceless NPCs that will populate some of the jobs become integral parts of your backstory that you can interact with as a side-quest that runs along with the actual job. On a similar vein, if you have any suggestions for the general story of the thread, I'm also certainly open to those as well, feel free to just send me a PM whenever and we can have a chat about your ideas, and whether they'll fit with the overarching plot that I'm planning! Finally, I'll reiterate that if you have any queries, concerns, or issues with anything (this post included), or have any themes that you can see coming that you would rather avoid having to interact with for any reason, I consider it an integral part of our relationship as GM and Player that you feel comfortable raising them with me. If you feel that I have failed in this regard, feel absolutely free to have a chat with one or more of the other players who might be able to help sort out the issues at hand, and hopefully we can ensure that everything is cleared up and sorted out; I am human and will make mistakes, and it will be up to you all as a collective to let me know where I have gone wrong and hold me accountable to make them right! I look forward to roleplaying with all of you! [/center] [/hider] [hider=NPC Post Template] [hr] [hr] [center][img]http://txt-dynamic.static.1001fonts.net/txt/dHRmLjY2LjVjYWRhNy5TR0Z5Y0hrbmN5QlhhVzVuLjAAAAAA/vtks-felicidade-2016.regular.png[/img][/center] [hr] [center][img]http://txt-dynamic.static.1001fonts.net/txt/dHRmLjY2LmE4YThhOC5SMjlzWlcwbmN5QklZVzVrLjAA/more-news-from.again.png[/img][/center] [hr] [center][color=fff79a][h1]Illedrith Adrasia[/h1][/color][/center] [/hider]