So far, the reception for this voting solution is lukewarm at best. And, notably, half of the current members have already responded.
I go to lunch in a couple of hours. If nothing tilts the scales in favor of voting between then and now, we'll go by default rulings. I'm not gonna setup a poll based on the responses I've gotten so far.
@FoxSoxs To be clear, the resolution was already determined before this situation even arose. The rules still hold, and I have no intention of changing them. Under normal circumstances, whichever person gets accepted first takes the slot. Character sheets needed to be posted anyway for that to even happen.
The timing was a bit weird for these three, so voting seemed more fair, but would be a one-off exception.
But if there's no interest in voting, it defaults to the normal first come, first serve model.
So here's the situation. Since the in-character world at large reacts to what players do, the logistics involved in having a story driven by more than 5-7 players can easily become an exercise in masochistic tedium. 8 is actually on the high-end of my acceptable player count, but the Play-by-Post format has a pacing slow enough that I'm not going to be drowning in content.
There are currently 7 active players, and only 1 slot left open. However, I suspect a slot is about to become available. I haven't really heard from Quaint Quasar in awhile. More to the point, the 7 day deadline for inactivity is literally tomorrow. If this player doesn't post or massage me in the next 24 hrs, I will bench his/her character.
Since there is three of you who wish to join, and I can accommodate only 1 of you--no promises about 2--I'm tempted to solve this with a vote.
Each applicant will post their character sheets.
Then, the current active players (myself included) can vote on which one they would like more.
Voting would be ranked, so the poll will more accurately reflect preferences. Example.
[1] First Pick [2] 2nd Pick [3] 3rd Pick
Players will send votes to me via PM, and I'll tally the results.
Applicants who achieved 2nd and 3rd place will be given a reserved spot for future openings.
"Dryad?" The shambling hulk lumbered a few steps toward the Nara. The dark crevices it presumably used as eyes narrowed. Rubble twisted behind its face with tremendous effort. Thinking seemed to overexert the troll. Thoughts came slowly and distilled over time like crystals forming. Fortunately, some formed faster than others. "Don't know dryad. Only trolls allowed-" It started repeating itself when its granite jaw suddenly fell to the ground. In the confusion, a lizard scurried out of its mouth. The troll ground to halt, stooped forward, and, with the great care one typically displays for newborn children, placed the thin slab of rock back in proper jaw-like position. It straightened and began again. "Only trolls allowed 'ere. Human village is beyond the river. Calls it Jhorm." Clumps of dirt pelted the ground as the troll's torso twisted westward. It raised a knobby arm covered in short, blue-green grass and ashen roots. It didn't have fingers to point with so it gestured vaguely according to some sense of direction. "Humans is not supposed to be in the Devil's Spine. Bad things 'ere." It paused briefly and its eye sockets shuddered with the burden of thought. Small earthen spike grew from its other limb. "Grendel eat humans." Another spike slowly raised through a patch of moss. "Wolf eat humans." Then another. "Human eat humans. Shadow eat human. Mist eat human." Each time it recounted an item on its mental list, another spike raised along its arm. The troll recalled a vast litany of things which ate humans. "...Troll eat humans. But. This one likes dwarves better." It said at last, gesturing at itself with an arm no different than a spiked club.
With a sudden, preternatural quickness, the troll's body crumbled and violently rearranged itself. It was looking at the mountain peaks in the distance. Then a cascade of white plumes began stampeding down the mountainside. A crack of muffled thunder rush past the three bystanders. Then the world shuddered. An awful keening pierced through the tidal wave of primal noise and collided with the troll. It burst apart into loamy chunks and bits of rock and littered the ground.
After the shockwave passed, a mossy head of rock rolled loose from the root of a nearby tree. A crooked line formed along one side and then cracked open. Familiar empty sockets stared wordlessly at the mountain and the gold-winged creatures flying among them. "The scream and frozen howl... This one knows it." It spoke without a mouth, its words trembling nervously through the ground. "Trolls leave." The fissures of its eyes abruptly fused shut and the once animated stone head went silent. In the foothills, the forest moved. All manner of creature were fleeing the mountains.
The aurora blazing over the mountains possessed a spectral beauty that offended the senses. If you stared for too long, the coiled tendrils of light dart away. If you squinted for better focus, the aurora almost disappeared. With just one look anyone could sense how unnatural it was. As Astrid travelled ever closer to it, her instincts cried out in alarm. Even if she wasn't afraid of it, it spoke to a very primal and very terrified part of her mind. The back of her neck bristled with cold apprehension. And she knew it wasn't the weather either.
She and Marik had left the ramshackle inn and set out for the mountain trails. They weren't far and were easy enough to find. The locals had been kind enough to mark the path with skull totems, monstrous heads skewered on pikes, and other grotesque, but appropriate warning signs.
Marik didn't need to be literate to know they all meant Turn back now. Monsters ahead. Even his own children knew not to go anywhere near the Devil's Spine.
Astrid translated the inscriptions aloud, her voice strained awkwardly in parts as she struggled to interpret the symbols. "Scream and frozen howl... Fear to tread where death may die, beneath forlorn... skies?"
"Why must you read everything?" He grumbled irritably. He rolled his eyes and open his mouth to say more, but something else caught his attention. Four dimples in the snow. His eyes narrowed suspiciously and he raked his gaze across the ground. There were faint tracks half covered by a recent snow. Wolves by the look of it. At least two of them, but probably more. He walked a few paces and followed the trail. The tracks they lead into the mountains. "Stay alert." There was an obvious note of urgency in his voice.
Astrid turned, saw his serious expression, and followed his eyes to the tracks on the ground. She could survive a fight against hungry wolves, but wolves in a pack became suspiciously intelligent. She disliked the idea of being ambushed. Then against her will, her dark imagination conjured the gruesome image of being eaten alive. The horrible reality was she would survive it. Her stomach turned at the thought.
Several old timbers shuddered at the sound of grinding stone. A craggy boulder jutting out from a nearby hill sheared away from the ground. The boulder stood up. Patches of mottled leaves, vines, and rotted wood coalesced around its stony frame. The cracks across its chest formed the likeness of a moustached face centered atop a long, wooden nose. A troll. It made a strange noise--part yawn, part irritated growl, part earthquake. The cracks formed jagged slits which could be thought of as small, squinted eyes, although the sockets were empty, and the ledge of moss one might call a "brow" seemed furrowed. The creature looked at the mountain, then stared at itself for awhile, and carefully picked a few strands of grass off of its arm. It turned with some effort, slow under its own ponderous weight, and stared blankly at Nara. With timeless inevitably, it shifted bodily towards Iva, then back to Nara again. And it continued like this for the next few minutes before its lichen-covered brow cracked apart and shifted upward, mimicking a vague expression of surprise. "Only trolls allowed 'ere. Go back to your village, hu..." The troll suddenly seemed at a loss for words. It stared at Nara pensively. A nearby swallow took this opportunity to perch itself on the troll's brow, preened its feathers a bit, and then settled down for a long nap. The sound of rocks shifting and grinding together filled the silence. "Not human? What is you?" The troll rumbled at last. Its words bellowed as if echoing through a cavern. and its tone indicated the kind of displeasure one would expect from an intractable old man. Mildly annoyed by the disturbance, the birds collectively ruffled their feathers and puffed their chests, but ultimately didn't move.
Streaks of bright amber and hot orange gleamed along the walls of Masrith's icy hovel. Each facet was mirror that reflected a skewed version of his lithe, reptilian form. The cavern was long and sinuous, and it snaked further down, out of sight. Even while sitting completely still, staring into the throat of the cave gave the feeling of sliding downhill, like being swallowed by some colossal serpent.
Despite the distant sounds of shifting ice, the cavern was quiet and solemn. The Devil's Spine was forsaken place and every inch of the frozen terrain echoed this grim truth.
As the firelight danced, time crawled. In the darkest depths of the earth, slick tendrils and a thousand hungry mouths skulked its way through narrow tubes and passageways. Every time the fire hissed, unnerving squelches and scratching noises responded. The sound was wrong. It didn't come from anywhere. It just pooled above or behind you like some dark cloud and crawled around the room. The silence that followed was worse. As if the air had died. It only ever lasted a moment, but Misrith's breathing, the crackle of the fire, and thumping of blood in his veins: all of it became suddenly silent.
Like shadows moving behind a curtain, dark shapes darted around beneath the snow. They rapidly approached the two sisters (@Shiyonichi) cautiously making their way down the mountain slopes only to vanish into the crags of a rock face. Slowly, silently they worked a few stones loose. Their movements small and the sounds were drowned out by the wind. Then an ominous thunder ripped through the clear sky and signaled the coming disaster. The dull roar of crumbling stone and ice--at first distant, quickly rising into a violent crescendo and--echoed intensely throughout the valley. The ground shuddered as a snowy torrent began sliding down the mountainside.
Just as the thundering cacophony of stampeding ice and snow became unbearable, a terrible wail tore through the mountains, drowning out the roar of the avalanche. The aurora above recoiled and dimmed, as if afraid. An impossible ripple spread across the mountains, warping the world as it went. It was primal and raw. It felt ancient.
Obscured behind the clouds which hugged the tallest peaks, a titanic shadow began to move. The temperature across the gray mountain reaches plummeted as a foul wind whipped itself into a growing flurry. Hundreds of distant black wings arrowed into the sky and disappeared between the stars as the fell and terrible cry trailed off into a lonely whine. The excruciating sound of it burrowed into the hollow depths of the mind and scorched the senses with phantasmal agony: searing red hooks ripping every vein and artery from the body while glass shards raked along the inside of one's own skull.
Gods long thought dead have begun to stir. Every soul in Norden heard the cry. The sound and fury heralds the return of a blighted era.
Extinction is approaching.
For clarity, the sections are put in what my best guess of chronological order would be (time frames are fuzzy and loosely contextualized here). This last part affects everybody. Enjoy the mental scars <3
@Rune_Alchemist There's no real posting order as long as you guys don't dive off the deep end.
...I guess I should have mentioned that. Now that I think about it, it's been a very long time since I've ran a RP by myself. I've mostly been running tabletop RPG's in the past.
Incidentally, I was going to post the GM responses all at once, and I have a few of them done or nearly done. It should be up today.
@FoxSoxs More than happy to work things out with you. You'll have to give me a little time to get the info for you. A good chunk of it is written down, but.... it's horribly unorganized unlike the OP. I needed to go on a scavenger hunt for some other stuff anyway. ^^;
@Mag Lev Just read through them. Changed approved. =]
