BCTheEntity

We Aren't the Crystal Gems: A Steven Universe AU roleplay

I'll be honest, I just wanted to go on a long rant about science stuff. Apparently, that involved going off at Archmage for the lack thereof, despite SU's inherent principle of "magic space rock lesbians". My apologies if things have gotten, uh, out of hand, especially the assumption that Marry was previously GMed as okay by you guys. Just be aware that stuff like that can be abused to high heaven.

We Aren't the Crystal Gems: A Steven Universe AU roleplay

@Spinna Now, I was initially interested in this game, and had an interesting idea for it, but seeing @Archmage MC's character has killed it for me. At the most basic level, "space-time manipulation" is an exorbitantly broad ability with the potential to become exponentially more broken the more points are put into it, but Marry already possesses horrific amounts of destructive capability with just the one sub-power: the portals.

Reasons why Moldsvite's portal power is ridiculously broken (WARNING: SCIENCE AND ANGRY RANTING)

The most obvious point there is as follows: the edges of the portal, which would appear to be 2-dimensional lines, and how reality interacts with them. For instance, there are no conditions for preventing a portal cut, as described in the power itself, and I shouldn't need to explain how potentially broken that is. I will anyway. Let's take a hypothetical substance, Godstone, which is absolutely impervious to all usual forms of damage due to how dense and hard it is- crush it, cut it, throw it into a black hole, it's just fine- and put it halfway between those portals as they close. Can the portals cut it in half, if they can't be stopped from closing up? If they can, then they can cut literally anything, and the portals are secretly an unstoppable weapon with an impossibly thin edge.

Likewise, the edges of a portal have a defined hardness based on the substance they're placed upon. If they're connected to a fluid, i.e. a gas or liquid, then their edges are not solid and cannot be touched. So what happens if something or somebody, say our hypothetical Godstone, falls on to that edge, or if a portal placed on air moves into it at the edge? Again, there's the issue that they can cause an impossibly thin cut against literally anything, because one half of the substance is going to a different place entirely. Similarly, what if you "break" the edge of a portal on a solid surface? If it instantly closes, and cuts anything inside it in half, we go back to the problem from before - namely, that the portals are secretly 2-D blades that cannot be stopped by anything.

But that's not even the most destructive aspect of the portals. That award, according to a close friend of mine, goes to their ability to change size, and the reason that's true is because for any given portal or wormhole, point X must map to point X2 - that is, a given location on one portal must move to the equivalent location on the other portal, and on a 1:1 scale that just results in movement through space, "ooo - ooo". On a 1:2 scale, though, you end up with "ooo - o o o"; 1:3, you get "ooo - o o o", and so on. You'd think that would just cause the stuff passing through a mismatched portal set to just grow or shrink, and in a manner of speaking, that's correct - on the scale of quantum foam, at the Planck length, for every single individual point on the portal's "surface". A substance passing through the smaller portal and coming out the larger portal might "grow", in the sense that each individual point of the substance has moved away from each other point, resulting in the substance being completely and utterly vaporised at the most fundamental level possible.

Not calmly, either; the nature of quarks and the strong nuclear force means that you need a lot of energy relative to the scale to remove a quark from an atom, and tearing them all apart with no significant energy input just by moving through space represents a massive violation of the conservation of energy, to the point that it's more energetically favourable for reality to spontaneously generate new quarks to pair with the ones you've pulled apart rather than re-pairing them with their original quarks. You don't even get replicas of the original matter at that point. Considering how particle pairs work, you might even get antimatter, and I assume I don't need to explain why that's bad. And given the usual movement of air, the larger end of the portal would essentially explode, instantly and incredibly violently.

Oh, but that's not even getting involved with what happens in the opposite direction, large portal to small portal. Remember how the points in space get stretched apart going from small to large, at the smallest possible level of space? Yeah, that doesn't get better going in the opposite direction - compressing matter in that fashion would, at the very very least, instantly crush anything passing through into itself, most likely killing any living being or rock-based lifeform. More likely, however, and especially with more extreme size differences, is that that end would constantly produce a deadly, hyper-energised stream of compressed particles, destroying anything the portal is pointed towards - and that from just the air passing through. As I said, pass a living being through, they instantly get crushed into that stream of particles, instantly killing them and firing them off to kill even more things.

And, of course, we have the obvious conclusion to the "how far can we compress matter into itself?" conundrum - make the difference between the two portals big enough, and at the small end you get neutronium: pure neutron matter formed because the electrons and protons of the atoms passing through got forcibly smashed into neutrons; the stuff that makes up neutron stars; and ridiculously dense, to the point that enough would probably warp Earth's gravitational field until the whole planet got crushed into another neutron star. Make the difference even bigger than that, and eventually each individual fundamental particle will be compressed past its own Schwarzschild radius, i.e. the point at which it collapses into a singularity, thereby degenerating into a black hole. Let me just reiterate that plainly: the small portal, if small enough compared to the large portal, will spontaneously generate a black hole. Depending on how much matter is compressed in that fashion, the black hole may just explode and scorch the planet, or it may persist long enough to consume the entire planet. Both options are absurd, and extremely fatal for everybody on Earth.

Let's explain that simply, for those who don't like science and angry ranting. The portals themselves have 2-D edges that can cut anything and everything, whether the thing gets caught between them as they close or whether it's forced to move into a mid-air portal's edge. If the portals have different sizes compared to one another, then moving through the small portal to the large portal is like walking through a quantum blender that obliterates everything it touches, and then generates an explosion far more energetic than any nuclear fission or fusion bomb in existence to an unknown but presumably massive degree. And at best, moving through the large portal to the small portal will crush you to death and turn your particles into the beam of a wave motion cannon; at worst, you won't even get the chance to walk through it, because the small portal will have already generated a black hole that has consumed the entire planet.

So in case you can't tell, I'm not impressed with Archmage's grasp of physics (whether or not they know what the implications of their ability are, but I'm guessing "not"), or with Marry's abilities in general, or with the fact that the GM has not only allowed her, but has apparently allowed her before too. At least Earth won't be a problem for Homeworld anymore! Then again, Homeworld should already have been long-since destroyed too, under the circumstances.

Into The Dark: Mercenaries (Heroes of Fame and Fortune)

I've made a post for Nuva, likely my last one before the holiday. The plan for Nuva, assuming he's been in the shop until close to noon, would be to head towards the northern gates ASAP, and thus meet with the guy in question in order to see about fighting that troll. Shouldn't be too late for that, I imagine.

Into The Dark: Mercenaries (Heroes of Fame and Fortune)

'I think you'd know if I were stupid, sir,' Nuva replied to his initial assessment. 'And I assure you, I am spoken for enough that robbery would be a poor life choice. Though that said, my initial assessment was accurate: that much gold is somewhat much for my current standing. If I have a few weeks to gather it, though,' he mused, 'then... let's see, how much gold would I have in...' his muttering trailed off as he began figuring out how much time it would take for him to acquire as much gold as he'd need. If one hundred gold per major job was the standard, and he managed to gather, say, fifty gold per week from additional jobs, he'd likely be able to afford the whole thing in less than eight weeks. That seemed quite reasonable, considering his profession.

'I believe that will be manageable enough,' Nuva acquiesced. 'I shall return when I have the money needed. I trust I won't need to leave a name?' he asked as he began to walk out of the store. He really needed to check what time it was, and perhaps begin to prepare for dealing with the vampire, with or without the rest of the guild, if it wasn't verging toward noon yet. And if it was, he ought to head toward the northern gate post-haste.

@POOHEAD189@MiddleEarthRoze@Fetzen@rush99999@Tangletail@Jollan

Warhammer 40k: Enemy Without, Enemy Within - an 'Ecclesiarchal' RP [Mature][High Casual/Low Advanced]

'I agree with Sister Vitruvia, Inquisitor Kliment,' Alexa uttered, still cursing her helmet's deep tone, and surprised at how much she'd been talking recently. Then again, this more than most had been an eventful day. 'If the PDF are even somewhat corrupted, then no civilian on this planet is safe. The only way to be certain is to personally probe every single soldier for information and evidence, and with respect, I fear that our mere task force is not sufficient to handle such a massive undertaking. That said, I might almost propose calling in a larger Ordo Hereticus force to contain and interrogate the PDF of this world, and having them execute any heretics and relay any useful information to us, whilst we continue handling the more intimate and manageable portions of this investigation. Civilians tend not to be privy to the PDF's actions and interactions, to my knowledge- and if they are, I imagine it wouldn't be impossible to restrict PDF interactions with the civilian populace for the time it would take- and the most immediate way to protect this world's inhabitants would, after all, be to ensure their protectors are loyal.

'Speaking of which, if this-' Alexa gestured to the ex-heretic who had been masquerading as the man in charge of the planet. '-was not the real governor, then the real governor is surely in danger, if not already dead or otherwise irretrievable. As you say, revolution could spread if it becomes known that the governor has died - or worse, that his impersonator has died. I feel that it is of utmost importance that we look for him before entering the Underhive, or at least install a trustworthy replacement, however temporarily. If he happens to be within the Underhive, so much the better - we can search and investigate in the same stroke.'

Warhammer 40k: Enemy Without, Enemy Within - an 'Ecclesiarchal' RP [Mature][High Casual/Low Advanced]

@Jbcool I suppose the idea is to keep things on the down-low, in that case. Make sure no PDF members get out to spread word of anything, deal with the whole thing as quickly as possible to minimise contact, and I'm sure the Inquisitor has the initiative to figure out the logistics of such an event, as well as the intelligence to ensure its feasibility.

Are We the Bad Guys? - A WH40k RP [Mature]

...humm. Eldar soul stones, eh? An actually interesting tidbit of information. He supposed, then, that it was only polite to reply to Vedius in kind, whilst tactfully ignoring the red-armoured Marine's maniacal gibbering in his direction.

'I am Thorn,' Lucius uttered. Short, simple, direct, and a flat lie as usual. If they recognised the similarities between Lucius's appearance and Xepherial's, he wouldn't stop them naming him as a Dark Angel, but nor would he bother enlightening them if they were too dense to figure it out themselves. Realistically, that was all he'd intended to say, but two or three points continued to draw his interest:

Firstly, the ship needed a pilot. Naturally, this actually meant that it needed an entire staff's worth of crewmembers, thus making it impossible to reasonably fly, especially in its current state of "lodged somewhere inside a giant mass of other ships", unless Xepherial and, what did he call himself, Zuriel Ganymede violent physical twitch Quillios could between them finagle their way into controlling the entire device, a frankly absurd task given the scale of the problem. He'd let Vedius figure that one out for himself, if nobody else told him.

Secondly, the Ork was awake again, one Urgrugg Darkcracker... "Darkcrackah", rather... and doing something that seemed to be some sort of prayer, ended by smashing its fists against its head, blood dripping from the resulting wound. Whatever idiocies made it happy, regardless of the falsity of whatever deities it worshipped. There were the Chaos Gods, if they were Gods after all, and everything else that claimed divinity paled in comparison; it was that simple.

And thirdly... well, the problem now lay with the red Marine. He was eerily astute in his observations about how long they - Lucius in particular, but presumably the other two as well - had been unaware of current events. He, for one, had at least gathered that the Emperor of Mankind was now worshipped as a deity of some sort, a false belief in and of itself, but had yet to hear anything about how the Heresy ended... unless... what had it been that Suzy or whatever her name was had said before plunging part of that planet into the Warp? Something to do with a... corpse-god? He'd basically glossed over the terminology at the time, but if that, somehow, impossibly, referred to the Emperor himself...

'By all means, Apothecary of the House of Blood, or whatever your name and Chapter is,' Lucius murmured, hiding his disbelief with his usual mask of carelessness, 'do tell us how it ended, if you think we're so unaware.' He'd make his judgement if and when he had as much information as he could gather.

Warhammer 40k: Enemy Without, Enemy Within - an 'Ecclesiarchal' RP [Mature][High Casual/Low Advanced]

@Jbcool Could Kliment call in a larger force from the Ordo Hereticus to, essentially, outsource one of the tasks and relay any information to us, under the assumption that our task force of twenty four or less individuals won't be able to manage all of the possibilities you've proposed on their own? And I suppose just as importantly, could he do so without arousing suspicion and subsequent discontent in the world's civilian populace?

The Crucible - Winner Take All

Donezo. And having written all that up, @Lugubrious, please note that I'm going to be going on holiday in a few days, and likely won't be able to post in that time. So you're aware.

The Crucible - Winner Take All

The Book Keeper VS The Itinerant Exorcist - Rounds 2 & 3

Whilst Motley enjoyed the thrill of the chase, it did start getting old after a while. Especially when the weather was getting less than tolerable, and the individual he was chasing was starting to tire. In fact, it seemed like she was barely throwing any of those orbs of fire in his direction now - in a seemingly last-ditch effort, she flung about four at him in a tight cluster, an eye-rollingly poor effort considering her initial assault. Bored and wanting to finish her off- or at least get his hands on her phylactery, that soul container of hers- Motley promptly leapt diagonally sideways, into the wall of the still-medieval building she was just passing, then bounced off of that to land deftly in front of the mage, bringing her to an abrupt, gasping halt just a meter or two before him.

'Not to press the point, but this is getting old,' Motley drawled, glaring at her with only minor malice in his eyes. 'Cry uncle, or I'll make you.' And cliché aside, that was a promise, not a threat.

'Hahaha... I'm just... getting started...' the girl claimed, despite clearly being worn out. As if to prove a point, she promptly threw another grouping of four fireballs toward Motley, though to her credit, she did at least try to curve them in toward him from the four diagonals. Alas, she had left very obvious gaps in the formation, and so the vampire simply leapt over the upper two wisps, forming an arc toward the girl. What he had in mind was simple enough: with the nerve endings on his hands, shock her skull until she passed out, or at least keep her paralysed long enough to plug his phylactery into hers and steal her soul away.

What he hadn't expected was for her to rummage through her bag immediately after flinging the flames, and then to flick it in his direction as he jumped, like it would provide some form of protection. Almost insulted, Motley flicked the paper out of his path, only to suddenly grow weak, to land oddly and almost stumble before her, as the air pressure kept the note clinging to his hand for longer than desired.

Damn it, I forgot she was a magician for a moment, Motley cursed himself, even as he registered the spell's effects on him being notably lesser than they ought to - perhaps his innate willpower provided him some resistance to its effects, or maybe some other possibility was messing with its functionality. Of course she's trickier than she looks! And speaking of which, his preoccupation with the note and his sudden loss of strength had given her ample opportunity to further reveal this side of herself: with a yell of triumph, she brought forth the wisps she had fired at him earlier, apparently hidden behind her until this moment, curving them round her body and towards Motley again. With as much strength as he could muster, he leapt backward whilst tearing the note away from his palm, only to shriek in sudden agony as the four fireballs behind him slammed into his back, detonating on impact and setting him well and truly on fire, inciting a searing, seemingly-supernatural pain that he certainly wasn't used to experiencing.

'Ugh... I'm such a fool!' he lambasted himself in mid-air, stripping all of his articles of clothing away in one smooth motion of all his limbs now that his usual grace was restored, just to give himself a second longer to consider his next move. 'Of course she wasn't tired out. It was a ruse to make me lower my guard! HEAVY FUEL!' At the calling of his Stand's name, his body began to spew a flood of black gas from every pore and orifice other than his eye sockets, catching the fire on his body and forcing it away from his skin and flesh (and, since it was relevant, his clothing too, the fluid parting rapidly to allow the clothes to fall to the ground mostly unscathed), though the sensation and effect of being burned alive continued to manifest there, for now it was the Stand itself that burned, perhaps even faster than he himself would have.

Even so, he landed in a position of what he considered to be mostly advantage. Yes, his very soul was on fire, in a way that potentially threatened his life for its enhanced effect on both the undead and his Stand's natural weakness to flames of this sort, but it would maintain its form and substance for a while yet simply for how much of it he continued to emit; plus, he now had a lot more information about the girl, namely that she had greater stamina and was more cunning than he'd given her credit for.

But it seemed she was not immune to confusion, or embarrassment, the latter in particular an emotion he'd abandoned a long time ago. 'Uuuuh... w-why are you naked?' the girl asked, now unwilling to look at him for his exposed form, and in turn leaving herself open to attack. Had he just given her credit for being more cunning than expected?

'So my clothes aren't set on fire. I only have the one set,' Motley explained, already planning his next move and mastering the pain of melting and remelting muscle in his mind, for a sensation as base as pain should ultimately be meaningless to the undead, even if it was supernaturally-inflicted. And this time, he'd make sure she didn't ruin his attack with one of those... talismans, were they? Whatever they were, he couldn't touch them without losing strength, and he suspected touching them with Heavy Fuel would have the same result.

'Um... okay... w-well anyway, it seems I underestimated you,' the girl responded, echoing his own thoughts back at him in a shy, but still overconfident tone, 'for not only are you a filthy murderous vampire, but a vampire who has been possessed! By some form of, uh... smog ghost. And it burns just as freely as you, at that!'

'On the one hand, true. On the other hand, you can't burn something twice,' Motley responded, matter-of-factly. In the next moment, he sent Heavy Fuel out toward her, still burning with that unnatural fire, and now ready to punish her for her inattention, for clearly she was focused on not glimpsing his nudity.

And yet something else clearly had noticed. A humanoid figure, indistinct through the purplish haze, called for her to "Look out, master!", and though she spied the oncoming mass of darkness, her immediate reaction of "more wisps of fire" was a woefully inadequate response. They certainly detonated against the Stand, but barely affected its charge at all for the firewall it already presented; in the next second, Heavy Fuel had engulfed her, setting her ablaze in turn and drawing out a feminine yell of pain, before a portion of its form pooled into a mass of oil and wrapped round her ankle, flinging her over the head of its master to smack against the cobbles of the street with a thud that, for any other being, would be sickening to hear. A hard full-body blow, but non-lethal, just enough to wind and daze the girl rather than crack her bones, for though the Stand's physical strength was no more than Motley's own without enhancement, that was certainly sufficient to kill a normal human being with one hit.

And after that, he simply desummoned Heavy Fuel. The Stand vanished, and the flames boiling both his form and that of his foe with it once deprived of fuel. Yes, it had hurt like nothing else, but he'd recover rapidly. She, however, likely would not, and at that was quite singed - he guessed, however inaccurately, first-degree burns across her body, an evidently painful experience at best. Blisters everywhere, an experience he'd once been intimately privy to. Just now, as it happened, though perhaps "broiling flesh" was a bit more extreme than that.

Still, he couldn't sympathise with her. He still had a fight to win, and so strolled over to the groaning body, nabbing his own soul container from within his shirt and jacket as he passed that pile, and lifting the woman by the nape of her neck, her hood falling away as- wait, were those animal ears?

'Oh, that's what I'm smelling...' the vampire muttered, understanding the source of his foe's strange scent at last. Or at least guessed so, judging by the ears emerging from the top of her skull. Not lupine or feline, so from the shape and size, they were presumably vulpine - in other words, she was part fox. He supposed he really hadn't smelt any foxes around before, so that explained why he didn't recognise the musk. Interesting.

He'd ask about it later, if she gave any straight answers. Right now, he had a phylactery to recover. Espying the chain round her neck, he tactlessly dug his hand between her cleavage, drawing the item proper forth with little struggle for her state. Simple enough. He brought his own phylactery up from where it lay, ready to place them together.

The slight sound of a blade being drawn from its sheath, much quieter than many television shows would pretend, was the only warning he had, but it was enough for him to lean back, losing only his hand at the wrist to the sudden swipe of a katana aimed at his neck. Whilst he'd intended to curse her for concealing the weapon until now, he didn't get a chance before a reverse-swipe came back toward him, this time far more on the mark - though he stepped backward, it caught his throat and sliced it open, spilling the blood from the artery in his neck, silencing his voice, and most importantly disrupting his breathing somewhat. He'd barely processed that suddenly, she was showing skill beyond what her initial cowardice suggested, before she lunged at him, a third sword strike finishing the job and decapitating him entirely, again despite his superior speed. And now he was confused, a mild 'Wryy?' escaping his mouth in spite of its separation from his lungs.

It wasn't that she'd gotten faster, either... no, she was simply moving more efficiently, spending energy to attack instead of flailing her limbs around like a child manhandling a ragdoll. Could the entity he'd seen before have something to do with that? Perhaps she did have a Stand after all, or at least something similar. And now that Motley was aware of that... well, there wasn't much he could do to stop her from stabbing him through the heart, apparently a form of staking irrelevant to a vampire of his sort, but only because he'd taken the split-second opportunity to extend his blood vessels out of his neck to reattach to the body in the right places, and to then do the same again from his wrist stump to meet his hand. But by then, she'd raised a hand overhead and called forth... well, probably as many wisps of fire as she could, all destined to meet with Motley's face if he didn't act fast.

And what luck, for fast was the speed at which he acted best. Head and body communicating once again despite the continued disconnect of his spinal cord, his right arm moved, connecting a solid punch to the sudden assassin's jaw to stun her, and disrupt her casting entirely. That in turn gave him to time to reel his body parts in, neck and hand meeting and merging with their respective stumps again just two seconds after they'd first left it. And that allowed him to breath effectively once more - his body might have been able to use the Ripple sans head, but he figured the risk wasn't worth it, if Heavy Fuel's effect only remained in one part or the other of his person.

And so, he finally allowed his annoyance to flow free. Whether or not he maintained some of his humanity from his Stand, he was still a vampire at the end of the day. And she had, after all, done some notable damage to his person. A rapid flurry of punches, crackling with what seemed like black electricity, struck her torso over and over again, accompanied by a war cry of 'Soul Breaker Overdrive! WRYYYYYYY!' The attack ended with a much harder cross punch, flinging her sideways into the building they had stopped by, hard enough to crack the outer layer of the wall of the house itself. Naturally, the girl was unconscious before she slumped to the ground, defeated outright by the attack. Still not dead - he'd limited his Dead Ripple to a smaller fraction of its full strength, and even then her own energy had seemingly been substantial enough to absorb the hit and then some - but she'd probably be out for a while, and she'd certainly be too bruised and enervated to use any more magic even if she were up on her feet.

At last relieved of the spell of combat, and regenerating nicely thanks to the life energy he had stolen, Motley sighed deeply, content that he was finally safe to deal with himself and his first foe as he saw fit. The first step of that: getting her soul. Striding over to her figure, he grabbed her phylactery from where it lay over her shirt in one hand, bringing his own soul container to hers with the other, and... the smith had said the "nozzle" of the receiving container should be used to draw forth the soul from the giving container, so he pressed the spike of his own phylactery into the hole at the center of hers.

...well, that seemed to do the trick, anyway. Step two: return his clothes to his body. He could walk around the city nude, but that would just be inconvenient for, amongst other reasons, keeping his phylactery hidden and maintaining an element of surprise. Thus, he gathered the items he had shedded and pulled them back on, noting where each article of clothing had taken damage from that cursed magical fire. Honestly, that was just rude of her.

As for step three... well, if he intended to make a combat ally of her, he supposed he ought to make sure she didn't get eaten whilst she couldn't defend herself. Grabbing and lifting the fox-girl over one shoulder, he brought her into the house he'd just flung her against, looking round to ensure nobody was home, before taking her to what seemed like a nice enough bed- that is, it was the most modern alternative to the literal beds of straw elsewhere in the building- and laying her down upon it. As it happened, there were few rooms in the building, old and peasant-built as it was, and if he sat next to the girl's torso, he could see both the entrance door and most of the plasma-screen television on the far wall that drew its power from who knew where. It was no book, but it'd do for keeping himself entertained. Leaving his charge's side for just long enough to recover the remote control, he turned the TV on, and began to flick through the channels. He supposed he'd be doing that a lot over the next few hours.