Protea - No Ordinary Interest Check - Help me!

[SpookySquid]

<Snipped quote by Oswald The Penguin>

Hm. Magic is defined by its Forms and its Affinities prescribed during spell preparation. Also during the preparation, it is given a name/incantation which is used to cast it. If a person lashes out with magical energy, with no definition and an incantation made up on the spot, I suppose a primitive spell could be used. It would be a lot like raw magic, very dangerous and uncontrollable, most of all to the user. I've been thinking of making a little tab for certain supernatural diseases/afflictions present in Protea, and this would help thicken that list. I shall call it Burnout - decreased ability to regain mana and use magic after using a spell that hasn't been prepared.

@Lugubrious

Perhaps we could make the afflictions affinity specific? I'd be willing to come up with something if you would like as I've got a thought or two bubbling in the back of my mind.

[Lugubrious]

<Snipped quote by Lugubrious>

Perhaps we could make the afflictions affinity specific? I'd be willing to come up with something if you would like as I've got a thought or two bubbling in the back of my mind.

@SpookySquid

Sure, if one of them goes beyond ordinary magic warp.

[Lord Santa]

Okay, another question, is it like an industrial era setting, or what? I guess I want to know what the world looks like. Is it kinda like the industrial era, or like what?

[SpookySquid]

Okay, another question, is it like an industrial era setting, or what? I guess I want to know what the world looks like. Is it kinda like the industrial era, or like what?

@Lord Santa

1920s technology limit

[Lord Santa]

Alright, let's see what I can do with this...

[Mortalbean]

Lapizus Gegani

Name: Lapizus Gegani
Sex: Male
Age: 740
Race: Golem
Affinity: Terra

Personality: Lapizus possesses patience without bounds, no longer needing to worry about the fragility of flesh he takes his unending life slowly, walking and even talking just as carefully and deliberately as an artisan might ply his craft. Needless to say Lapizus is often polarizing to those he meets, although generally sociable he does far more listening than talking and is comfortable with long periods of silence. Those who wish to probe him about his intellectual pursuits will find themselves frustrated by his unwillingness to change his mind.

Fighting Style:Lapizus prefers to fight by using his magic to enhance the toughness his already formidable body and simply pummeling his opponent to death without regard for tactics or strategy. As a traveler Lapizus can simply fight until his opponents are exhausted, or no longer able to dodge his massive, slow moving blows.

Bio: In his first life Lapizus was a simple laborer. Even in life had he been asked under what flag he labored or for who he worked the answer would have come only after a long pause. Lapizus lived under a dynasty which is now long dead, absorbed by a kingdom which was in turn subsumed into the Arcadian Commune in a war centuries ago. Even by bearing the name "Gegani" Lapizus stands as a monument of living stone to an age nearly forgotten.

Lapizus's living life was fairly typical. He farmed his land as his father had before him, and as his father had done in turn. Lapizus got married and had a normal family with many children. Lapizus still remembers the day he died, surrounded by the warmth of the unyielding love of family. Little did he know it would be the last warmth he could ever feel.

Salvation gifted Lapizus with his unfeeling yet strong stone body. Even after his first life Lapizus was still fated to continue his labors. Along with his new hands Lapizus adopted a new craft. Before he had raised life from the earth and now he carved life from stone. Many of his old labors can still be found throughout Monolith, adorning the walls with their tales of lives lived long ago.

Upon transcendence Lapizus's first thoughts were of his children and his bloodline. Despite his search nothing ever came up and he resigned himself to wandering the world, for the first time in his existence he had the freedom to do as he pleased yet no one to share such freedom with. Eventually Lapizus found his new calling, to simply observe the world and find the beauty in it.

Appearance:
(without swords)

Lapizus was a large man and a similarly large traveler. His 8' tall broad body made of blue pearl granite is distinctly the body of a golem. Lacking curves and other life-like features none could fail to instantly define him as a true blue golem.

(I'll be editing the other character into this post, I'm tired right now and have generally had a shitty day so this will be all for now. Feel free to leave feedback about Lapizus thought, he doesn't add much to lore so if I change anything I'll probably add more world building stuff to him.)

[Lugubrious]

Lapizus Gegani

Name: Lapizus Gegani
Sex: Male
Age: 740
Race: Golem
Affinity: Terra

Personality: Lapizus possesses patience without bounds, no longer needing to worry about the fragility of flesh he takes his unending life slowly, walking and even talking just as carefully and deliberately as an artisan might ply his craft. Needless to say Lapizus is often polarizing to those he meets, although generally sociable he does far more listening than talking and is comfortable with long periods of silence. Those who wish to probe him about his intellectual pursuits will find themselves frustrated by his unwillingness to change his mind.

Fighting Style:Lapizus prefers to fight by using his magic to enhance the toughness his already formidable body and simply pummeling his opponent to death without regard for tactics or strategy. As a traveler Lapizus can simply fight until his opponents are exhausted, or no longer able to dodge his massive, slow moving blows.

Bio: In his first life Lapizus was a simple laborer. Even in life had he been asked under what flag he labored or for who he worked the answer would have come only after a long pause. Lapizus lived under a dynasty which is now long dead, absorbed by a kingdom which was in turn subsumed into the Arcadian Commune in a war centuries ago. Even by bearing the name "Gegani" Lapizus stands as a monument of living stone to an age nearly forgotten.

Lapizus's living life was fairly typical. He farmed his land as his father had before him, and as his father had done in turn. Lapizus got married and had a normal family with many children. Lapizus still remembers the day he died, surrounded by the warmth of the unyielding love of family. Little did he know it would be the last warmth he could ever feel.

Salvation gifted Lapizus with his unfeeling yet strong stone body. Even after his first life Lapizus was still fated to continue his labors. Along with his new hands Lapizus adopted a new craft. Before he had raised life from the earth and now he carved life from stone. Many of his old labors can still be found throughout Monolith, adorning the walls with their tales of lives lived long ago.

Upon transcendence Lapizus's first thoughts were of his children and his bloodline. Despite his search nothing ever came up and he resigned himself to wandering the world, for the first time in his existence he had the freedom to do as he pleased yet no one to share such freedom with. Eventually Lapizus found his new calling, to simply observe the world and find the beauty in it.

Appearance:
(without swords)

Lapizus was a large man and a similarly large traveler. His 8' tall broad body made of blue pearl granite is distinctly the body of a golem. Lacking curves and other life-like features none could fail to instantly define him as a true blue golem.

(I'll be editing the other character into this post, I'm tired right now and have generally had a shitty day so this will be all for now. Feel free to leave feedback about Lapizus thought, he doesn't add much to lore so if I change anything I'll probably add more world building stuff to him.)

@Mortalbean

Excellent! I have no critique to offer on this right now, though you might put a short description of the swords mentioned in his picture into his fighting style.

[Mortalbean]

@Lugubrious

I meant to indicate below the picture that he didn't actually have the swords, the picture was simply too close with swords to pass up.

[SpookySquid]

<Snipped quote by SpookySquid>

Sure, if one of them goes beyond ordinary magic warp.

@Lugubrious

On second thought, I think I'm gonna pass on doing that. In retrospect, being that specific seems like a lot of unnecessary work and not particularly relevant. XD

[Lord Santa]

@Mortalbean Isn't that picture a picture of a yugioh card? I forgot which one it was, but I swear it is...

[Eklispe]

Giant solider of stone@Lord Santa. Also if not guessed I'm planning on a CS

[Lord Santa]

Ok, thanks.

Another question, any good wars happened on Protea? Actually, what about the history of Protea?

[Lugubrious]

Ok, thanks.

Another question, any good wars happened on Protea? Actually, what about the history of Protea?

@Lord Santa

Here's my stance on history: you can make some stuff up, and after you've done so I'll determine if any edits need to be made. A long-time-go war is the one mentioned in Mortalbean's character's bio, while more recent ones include the wars against the New Coven and the Sovereignty. Still-ongoing ones are those between the Hallowed Commonwealth and the Legion of Flies on Spinel, and between the Colonies of the Solstice and the wild on Tourmaline.

[Lord Santa]

Alright, that was more of a just-in-case kind of thing, but good to know. Well, here's my CS.

God it took a while, like, damn. I had a lot of fun with the spells, though I saw that no one really did it like I did. Still good, though. Tell me if anything's wrong with it, it's still practically WIP.

-----------------------------

Name: Ash (no last name)

Sex: Male

Age: 24

Race: Human

Affinity: Ignis

Personality: (I’m probably going to regret this) Ash has a pretty grim-dark personality, if you catch my meaning. Due to his tragic backstory, he doesn’t really trust people that much. He hardly speaks and doesn’t say anything unnecessary and he’s relatively unsociable. He also lacks direction so he’s a tad depressed.

Fighting style: Ash’s fighting style is fast and versatile. He excels at stealthy takedowns but is a terror on the battlefield with his wide array of spells and adaptable fighting style. He uses a shortsword and dagger combo when in melee, exploiting weaknesses the best he can. He has a series of throwing knives for mid-ranged options. He can switch either dagger or shortsword for a cool one-handed tech crossbow, opening up the battlefield for long ranged combat. This is just what he has on hand, and he has more deadly weapons in a few safehouses here and there, hidden in case he knows he needs them. Besides weapons and skill, his magic arsenal isn’t anything to laugh at. His spells support his fighting style, providing distractions and covering his weak points. Good thing too, because he doesn’t have much for defense. Ash’s only real defensive defense move is parrying, and he usually doesn’t wear armour. He favours mobility over tankiness, and he covers the rest with magic and skill.

Spells

Ashen body

Form: Self
Affinity: Ignis, Permutatio
Incarnation: “Ashes to ashes.”
Ash’s signature move. Upon activation, his body and the stuff he’s wearing (including weapons and food and stuff) turns into ash, which he can control. The transformation is revertable at will. Ash’s control over the ash is similar to a hivemind with many separate parts, he can control all of it separately, but it all reforms in the same spot.

One thing to note is that certain parts of the ash correspond to certain body parts. While difficult, it’s not impossible to separate the ash before he reforms. Also, reforming takes time and while the ash takes the fastest route it can, if trapped, the part of the body it corresponds to will take longer to reform. Additionally, if he can’t completely reform, he will remain in an ashen state until he is complete.

Ashen body can be used consecutively without incantation but too many uses will create a toll on the body. The mana usage is a per-second affair, so he can’t stay in his ash form for too long.

Ash craft

Form: Technically area, or maybe touch, or maybe self. Idk
Affinity: Ignis, Fabrico
Incantation: “From dust we were made…”
With Ash Craft, the user can create small solid objects out of conjured ash. They roughly have the durability of stone but the sharpness is up to the user’s imagination. At Ash’s current level, he can’t make objectes bigger than a shortsword, but that’s often more than he needs.

The objects created have minor fire attributes. For example, a blade made by ash craft has minor fire damage capabilities. The objects will dissipate naturally over time and it takes a moderate amount of mana, depending on how big the object is and how durable it needs to be.

Immolate

Form: Touch
Affinity: Ignis
Incantation: “To dust we return.”
Immolate is a vicious spell. It’s basically massive fire damage, enough to instantly cremate the victim. Immolate eats away at the victim’s flesh, burning them from the inside. The limitations of immolate: It can’t be used often and the majority of its effectiveness is lost if aimed incorrectly.

Immolate produces intense heat at a point designated by the user, usually with the help of an arrow or weapon. The flames burn the victim’s insides and incinerates them. However, if it misses, the spell goes off regardless which makes it useless unless it hits. It’s also easily blocked by armour and its mana cost is really big, so it’s best used with precision or when you’re guaranteed a hit.

Blinding smoke

Form: Area
Affinity: Ignis, Tenebris
Incantation: The smoke of innocence hides evil
Blinding smoke bomb is, simply put, a smoke bomb. It’s a formed ball of ash that, when thrown, explodes at will, releasing a whole lot of smoke. The area where the smoke is released is magically darkened, blinding anything inside. The smoke also confounds the sense of smell as well as sight. Takes a moderate amount of mana and lasts for a few seconds.

Shadow dance

Form: Self
Affinity: Tenebris, Motus
Incantation: “Let the dance of shadows confound my enemies.”
Shadow dance covers the user in randomly shifting shadows, changing to a random tempo. As the user moves, the shadows strobe, leaving afterimages in their wake. It also gives the user a temporary speed boost and enhanced reflexes.

These boosts come into play when the user does an action. The confounding shadows mimic several actions the user could be about to do, thereby confusing the enemy as to what the user is actually doing. It’s another mana-a-second thing which he can turn off but takes less than ash bod.

Ash clone

Form: Self probably
Affinity: Ignis, maybe Fabrico or Telum
Incantation: “Spirits of vengeance arise, may you do what must be done.”
This is Ash's best spell. When the spell is used, it summons up to 2 ash clones which are clones of the user. They have basic intelligence and can be relied on to some extent. Their bodies are made of ash so they aren’t exactly solid, but they can use Ash craft to make weapons.

The ash clones can’t use the user’s abilities, but they do a lot to help him in open combat. It takes a lot of mana to summon them and they don’t last forever. He can cancel them to get rid of them early.

This is a master assassination skill, known to be used by the master assassin in Ash’s order. That guy’s clones were shadow clones, and this spell has many variatians of many different affinities, each with subtle differences.

Bio (really long, if you know what I mean)

((What I meant was that it's pretty long))

Anthony (That’s his old name) was born to a reasonably non-descript peasant family in Chalcedony, somewhere in a small mining town. As a child, he didn’t speak as much as other kids, but he had a penchant for learning. He quickly learned everything he could and had the potential to be pretty much anything. However, tragedy struck when he was 10 years old. A group of bandits burned his village to the ground, and he was the only survivor. An assassin showed up to kill the bandits and took him in. Prior to the incident, he hadn’t known what he wanted to do in life. Now he did. He wanted to become an assassin.

The incident had given him bad burns so he was bandaged from head to toe. The bandit leader had escaped, and Anthony wanted to find him and kill him. To do so, he was taught all of the assassination techniques of the order of assassins. After that, he was given the task to kill a target (like an initiation kind of thing). It was the old bandit leader who burned his village down. One might expect that he’d rage and jeopardise everything but he did it carefully, making sure there were no mistakes. He’d thought about different routes and found that a style he liked; magic. He had experimented with certain magical elements and found his affinity and spells he liked. The assassination order had a pretty good magic support base, but only he was able to learn it at such a young age. Using those made it the assassination really easy. He ended up with an epic combo of Ash bod chain kills, which was really cool. From then on, he had a new name – Ash.

He climbed higher in their ranks and was a prominent member of their organisation. He even learned techniques from the organisation’s leader, who became like a father figure to him. He basically became the successor, really. Until he noticed one thing. They were, for some reason, hiding something. As it turns out, the assassination order was ordered to do a hit on his city by some big nobility dude who wanted his home town’s resources. It was at this point that Ash began to question everything that he’d been doing. He wasn’t sure whether it was right or wrong, or whether it was alright or not. He wasn’t even really sure what right or wrong was anymore. With a conflicted mind, he went back to the thing he’d been taught. Killing.

He killed the nobility guy (for revenge) without being told to. He got reprimanded for it, but he brought the whole morals thing with the assassination organisation leader guy. The leader guy told him to meet back at HQ after a few hours, so he left. When he came back, he noticed that everyone was gone. He ended up in the boss guy’s office and boss guy had something to tell him.

It turns out that boss guy had been wrestling with the whole morals thing for a while now and he’d told the entire organisation (save Ash) about it. He then told them to make their own decisions and that’s what they did. The majority went to take care of personal vengeance before disappearing off the face of the earth. Some of them went away to go be something less murderous. A few stayed and a few tried attacking boss guy, all of which he dealt with in short order. Then he declared that he was disbanding the assassin organisation and decided to give Ash his legacy.

It encompassed 3 things: A knife, boss magic and a piece of advice. The knife was the boss’s favourite knife. It wasn’t special, but it could transmit spells better than average. It looked cool as well as being sharp and durable. A trusted blade. One that could not, and would not, fail him.

His second legacy was magic. They’d linked their minds a while ago. Boss guy was also quite a gifted mage, and he helped Ash learn the Tenebris associated spells. Boss guy gave him his best spell, the clones. Boss guy encouraged him to make his own variation as it was a malleable spell, able to be changed into different affinities.

His last legacy was a piece of advice. Trust at least one person. The assassin doctrine was to trust no one but themselves and their skills. However, it was a lonely road. Boss guy had been betrayed a lot in the past, yet he’d always wanted one person to confide to.
“Humans are not lonesome creatures.” Boss guy said. “If you do find that one person whom you can entrust everything to, do it.”
That was the last thing he said before taking his own life.

After that tragic moment, a group of dudes who wanted to stay behind busted in and were like ‘hey, you killed boss dude!’ and Ash was like *Ash clone* *triple bitch slap* *run away*. The organisation quietly collapsed and everyone went their separate ways.

Since he didn’t know what to do, he became a blade for hire, doing what he does best. Occasionally, he’ll run into some of his old colleagues. One of them became a prominent bard, in fact. Also occasionally (though not occasionally enough), he meets some dudes from the new organisation made by the guys who wanted to stay behind. They are still very small and very underground, being idiots who basically worshipped boss guy as the bossiest boss who ever bossed.

And so Ash became a whispered legend. The bandaged assassin who hardly talked and disappeared into the wind.

Appearance:

Like this but with bandages covering the bottom half of his face and his clothes are dark grey. There are also bandages on his arms and legs. He has bandages pretty much everywhere, really. He’s about 182 cm. Also add a brown cloak going over his clothes and stuff.

[reddy]

That should take care of the glaring errors. Eresa will share the rimary character spot with Ghurst. I do it so if the story gets bogged down in one place, I have another character free to work with until a log-jam sorts itself. I'm fine with setting her up as a person of importance in Ebb. Scheming is, after all, her true element.

[Lugubrious]

Very nice, Lord Santa! Your spellcrafting was right on the money. If you feel like it, you can make modifications to his personality to make him something you'll enjoy more. For instance, in another RP I'm in, which partially inspired some of Protea's magic, I have a character with an unfortunate past and dark powers, but he hides his pain beneath constant cheeriness and laughter and focuses instead on doing what he enjoys.

Good stuff, reddy.

[Lord Santa]

Very nice, Lord Santa! Your spellcrafting was right on the money. If you feel like it, you can make modifications to his personality to make him something you'll enjoy more. For instance, in another RP I'm in, which partially inspired some of Protea's magic, I have a character with an unfortunate past and dark powers, but he hides his pain beneath constant cheeriness and laughter and focuses instead on doing what he enjoys.

Good stuff, reddy.

@Lugubrious

Nah, I think I'll be fine. Good experience and all. I can't do super vengeance driven guys, though, so it's good I got that out of the way.

I was getting a bit silly down the end of that character sheet anyway to offset the seriousness, and I'll probably balance that by making another, stupider character. So it's all good

[Lord Santa]

Made a few small changes. Changed Ash's age because it works better that way in my head and added a cool tech crossbow to fit the time period.

[Lugubrious]

I'm starting to think we might be on the road to officially starting. While the RP might not officially start then, I plan to make the official OOC on Friday afternoon. Sound good?

[Lord Santa]

I'm starting to think we might be on the road to officially starting. While the RP might not officially start then, I plan to make the official OOC on Friday afternoon. Sound good?

@Lugubrious

It'll be good to sort out the characters from the other stuff, so yeah, sounds good