Ellri

The Relics (No Plot/Fantasy/Character Driven/Worthy of Skepticism)

For months, Thora had moved through the land, Sometimes staying in the forests, other times the villages. Both held nourishment, one for her hunger, the other for her thirst. With her skill at trapping and snaring, she never went hungry. But no matter how much she ate, she could not sate the Thirst. No, she could not. Every now and then, she found herself irresistibly drawn to a village or town, simply to sate the Thirst. She hated it. And she loved it. She never felt as alive as the day after she had had her fill. But the Thirst could not be controlled. If she stayed too long in one place, it inevitably took control. She had learned that lesson many times. She had had to flee just as many times.

She hated the Thirst. She loved the blood. The silky, pulsating, warm feel of it flowing in after she sank her teeth into her prey. There was nothing like it in the world. Of course, she had grown rather good at fleeing. For some reason people did not like it when their friends or family turn up dead. It was not as if she could help it. They were there, and they tasted wonderful. It was the way of life. But tell that to a grieving villager and see how far it gets you.

Ever since fleeing home, Thora had found herself steadily changing more and more. She could feel her body stretching, as if her very flesh wasn't enough to fill it. Deep in the forests, she had seen in moonlit pools how her limbs were changing. She loved the look. She hated the feel. The more she changed, the more stretched she felt. And then there was the sun. It hurt. Its glare made it hard to see. Her cloak helped, but even without direct contact, she found herself increasingly discomforted by it.

More than anything else, she did not understand what was happening or why it was happening. Nothing she knew could explain it. She dared not ask anyone, for she was sure any would see how different she was and hate her for it. People always hated those who weren't the same. She'd seen it all the time back home. Thus she withdrew from society, preying upon its members, but never joining it if she could avoid it.

Eventually her path led her to the city of Amaryth, in the Kingdom of Othea. Not that Thora knew this. She had never learned about the world outside home, nor could she read her name, let alone roadsigns or scrolls. For that matter, she did not care for knowing that either, so long as she was neither hungry nor Thirsty. Her life was simple.

Deep inside the city, she had made her way to the largest unguarded building she could find, concealing herself up inside its rafters, where there was hardly any light. Just the way she liked it. None of the hated sunlight. She stayed there till well after dark, only then moving outside to find nourishment. After a few days, it had become clear that cities were much better, despite the crowds. No matter how she fed, people did not take notice of it. When there are a few dozen living there, one or two missing is immediately noticed. When there are thousands, no one cares. Little did she know that the building she hid in during the day was the Royal Otharion Theater. It was only on the night before the day of the coronation that she figured out something like that, for then they started posting guards. She was stuck, with no way out. She hated it. But she loved the darkness. It comforted her.

Stargate - Alliances

Its so boring with all those modern explosives... No real risk of random explosions... Oh the good ol' days of using pure nitroglycerin and substances like that...

The Relics (No Plot/Fantasy/Character Driven/Worthy of Skepticism)

Why would we want some overpriced wood?

Just be glad we did not port our evil overlord here.

Vampires - Powers, flaws and traits

There's not enough discussions here, so we figure another won't hurt.

Vampires are one of the most pervasive creatures in supernatural settings. Sometimes they're evil, other times good. And other times again, they're simply (in)different. Some love 'em, some hate 'em, and some want to become them...

But there's one thing that is common throughout the entire expanse of the many vampire mythoi. There's no single "truth" about what powers they have, what their traits are or what their flaws are. In some versions, they sparkle and are fragile. In others, they are unholy beings worthy of the deepest hells. In yet others they are other things.

What we'd like discussed is what people think that the "ideal" traits of the vampire should be.

we can't possibly list every trait, flaw or power. That would take too much time and space. So we'll list some of each.

Powers:
Hypnosis
transformation into bats
transformation into other creatures
Super-speed
Flight
transformation into mist
mind-to-mind speech
Immortality
etc.

Weaknesses:
garlic
Holy water
Inability to cross running water
need to sleep in home soil
Stakes
Fire
Boredom

Traits:
Drink blood
Don't age
Mesmerizingly beautiful
Ageless
long canines
Sparkle
lots of pointy teeth
Gruesome appearance
claw-like nails
pointed ears
Bound to sire
Bonded to sire
Sire irrelevant
OCD

Breeding/Siring:
Single bite turns
Single bite either turns or more likely kills
Blood drinking
Drinking blood plus extra step
Draining
Draining plus blood
Draining plus blood plus more
Normal reproduction
Magic ritual

Having those lists and what you hold in your heads... What attributes do you feel the "proper" vampire has? Discuss.

The Relics (No Plot/Fantasy/Character Driven/Worthy of Skepticism)

quite a few posts, yes. And we recently finished reading all the OoC posts. IC posts up next.

EDIT: We too are curious about how that map was made.

The Relics (No Plot/Fantasy/Character Driven/Worthy of Skepticism)

Name: Thora Thorvaldsdottir
Age: 22
Gender: Female

Relic Description: As with many other relics, it is deceptive in nature. When it first came into Thora's possession, it was a simple, open, short bracer, not unlike those used by archers. It was, and still is, quite unassuming in appearance, resembling plain black leather with a crimson rune on it. She put it on at a random whim, having no idea what it would do. The moment she closed it, the seam between halves disappeared and it molded itself to her wrist so that it was impossible to fit anything between the two. Though something must be capable of harming it, Thora has yet to find any such thing. The sharpest steel blade doesn't even scratch its surface.

Its powers are myriad and it is possible she has yet to discover them all. Since donning it, Thora has found herself able to move faster, react better, lift more and many things like that. Not to any extremes, but enough to give her an edge. Her vision has improved in the dark, her rate of healing generally increased.

But of course there are side effects. Sunlight, while not directly harmful, pains her. A thick cloak stops it, but it still discomforts her. In bright light, she actually has a harder time seeing than she had in the dark before the relic came to her. There are certain physical traits as well, but they will not be described here.

Skills:
Having grown up in a small, obscure village in one of the mountain ranges, she is not very skilled in around towns and cities. The larger they are, the less she knows about them. Prior to being chosen by the relic, she had never moved further than a day's journey from her home.
During childhood she was trained to set snares for small animals and as she grew older, build more complex traps. As such, she is self-sufficient for food so long as she is outside large settlements. But despite her skill at this, she has no notable skills at armed combat.
While being trained to lay traps for animals, she was also taught rudimentary foraging and tracking.
As a rural villager, she does not know how to read any language, nor how to write.

Background:
Thora was born some twenty-odd years ago in a small village deep in the mountains above Amaryth. Her childhood was simple. Nothing remarkable about it at all. Her parents were both trappers, skilled craftsmen of traps for any creature, be it a furry Miffith (creature not unlike a rabbit) or one of the great Balks (hard-skinned creature somewhat reminiscent of bears, but considerably more vicious). She grew up fully expecting to follow in her parents footsteps.

But fate, as everyone knows, is fickle. It does not care about what people might expect. It simply acts. The region around her village was dotted with ancient ruins from the Old Kingdom. For the most part, they've been picked clean centuries ago. Most of her village was constructed using stones taken from these very ruins. Whenever a new building is needed in the village, everyone steps in to help build, from the youngsters to the elders. It was during such a project that Thora found the Relic. It lay hidden beneath a large stone, in a small concealed room. It fascinated her, but she did not have time to look at it then. She simply picked it up and stuffed it down the neckline of her tunic. Belted as it was, it served as a large pocket for pretty much anything.

She continued working upon the construction all day long, eventually all but forgetting about it. It was only late at night, when she was preparing for sleep that awareness of it came forth with a thud. The thud of it hitting the floor when she untied the belt, to be exact. She sat down on her narrow bed, looking it over in the dim candlelight. It was quite unremarkable. Looked like black leather with a faint symbol in red on one side. There were no straps to tie it with, but it did not look odd without such.

Thora put it on as much out of curiosity as to what it might look like as anything else. Ever since, she has been unable to remove it. It molded to her wrist immediately, sealing itself shut and proving impossible to cut. But since it did not hurt, she soon enough decided to let it be. It simply did not seem relevant after a couple of days.

It took nearly half a year before the Thirst first began to show itself. It was as everything else about the Relic subtle. A faint ache that no meal or drink could sate. Thora did not understand it. Each new day, the ache was stronger. In turn with the growing Thirst, she found herself less and less comfortable in direct sunlight, taking to wearing her cloak even when it was neither cold nor rainy.

The first time she fed, she was horrified by what she did. It was a late evening, not far outside the village. She had been about to have a bit of fun with a boy from her village. She was rather fond of him and had been so for quite a while. There was no doubt the fondness was mutual. They were just about to go all the way when the rune on the Relic flared bright and she found herself incapable of resisting the sudden urge to sink her elongated canines into his throat. She miraculously hit the artery almost perfectly and began to suck deeply. A small part of her, ok a large part, was horrified, but the thirst was in control. After several minutes of deep sucking, she slowly regained control. However, by this time, it was too late. The boy had lost too much blood. Less than two minutes later, he lay dead. Horrified at what she had done, she rushed to put her clothes back on, then ran. She couldn't return home. She was too terrified by what had happened, too sure that none would understand. Thora wasn't sure what horrified her the most, the fact that she had killed him, or the sheer joy she had felt in the process. The ache that had been present for months in her lower abdomen had disappeared completely. It did not take a genius to connect the dots.

She did not have a name for what she had become, but in the days afterwards, she began to notice more and more how she had changed since the relic came to her. The rune glowed brightly for days after the murder, then slowly grew dimmer. A few days after the glow disappeared, she once more started to feel the Thirst. She had by this time come to another village not unlike her own, so though she did not truly want to hurt anyone, she knew she had little choice. She spotted the village drunkard wandering into a darkened alley and used that chance to spring upon him, latching on to his neck with an ease that could have seemed practiced. Like her now-dead lover, he was incapable of screaming. Unlike her deceased friend, it took less time to feed now. After she detached, he fell to the ground, sleeping soundly, his pulse a bit rapid, but otherwise fine. The twin punctures on his throat barely bled at all, the blood already coagulating around them.

Thora's first year as a Chosen went much like that. She slowly learned about the abilities of her Relic, but did not truly understand what made it so. Sometimes she managed to avoid killing, but most times she had no control over the thirst. She became more and more nocturnal, finding caves to be better resting places than houses or villages. She never stayed long in any one place, moving about the kingdoms, leaving a region quickly if she killed.

Appearance:
She is dressed after the fashion of her village, in a long, belted tunic with loose leggings beneath. Simple, leather boots and a thick woolen cloak with a deep hood. Physically she does not stand out. Her body is rather petite and she is quite short. Her hair is a soft brown fall that she generally keeps tied back. In other words, she would not really stand out in a crowd.

Ever since finding the relic, Thora has found her appearance changing subtly. Even for a long while after it began, she did not even notice the changes, so subtle were they. There were occasional aches, not dissimilar from growing pains, in the months after putting the relic on, but she paid them little heed. The first change she truly noticed was that her upper canines were slowly growing in length. Because it was the teeth themselves changing, it did not go rapidly. After a few months, they were roughly one and a half times their prior length. Enough to be unusual, but not enough to be remarkable. It took even longer before she noticed other changes, like growing leaner. Everything about her grew thinner. Not quite gaunt, but far from plump. Her ears also grew to a very faint point. Any other changes to her appearance were so subtle that they are impossible to quite put to words.

Motivation:
The one thing that has driven Thora ever since being Chosen, is thirst. To be exact, the thirst for blood. The longer between her feedings, the more blatant her traits are, the stronger the painful ache in her lower abdomen. Though the blood sustains her, she is still reliant to some degree upon real food. Just as sating the hunger will not sate the Thirst, sating the Thirst will not still the hunger.

Thora cannot truly control the relic. Had she known about its origins, she would have understood why. In the days of the ancient kingdom, people capable of bonding the relics like hers were found during infancy and were trained their entire lives to control them. Years of disciplined training just to control one aspect of the relic. For Thora, all the aspects came at once, not one of them with an instructions manual.

Thus, beyond Thirst, what motivates Thora is a wish for understanding. She longs to understand her Relic. For the first couple of years, she might have wished to be rid of it, but as she changed and grew used to having it, that wish at first faded, then disappeared altogether.

The Relics (No Plot/Fantasy/Character Driven/Worthy of Skepticism)

This does look a bit interesting.

We needed something to busy ourselves with while other RPs are slow. This did not match all our parameters, but enough.

We'll hash out a proper character later, but current idea revolves around a relic that makes the character a bit vampiric, with unforeseen consequences and not entirely good control. Possibly designed originally to make someone an excellent warrior at night or underground. To balance it out, and prevent it being OP, the relic needs to be fed, and the user is generally not fond of sunlight even when the relic isn't actively being used. Not decided if we'll go with any other traditional weaknesses. We'll figure that out when we read other CSs. The user will not have been trained for anything similar to what the relic was designed to be used for.

Is the idea good, or should we modify the concept? We're very fond of flaws, so have no fear about the character being overpowered.

Extragalactic Exploration Expedition: Survey Team II

Fair enough. Have a good time.

Going on the images we posted... We imagine that there'll be no more than two-three decks accessible normally.

Oh, and if you want to shrink the ship further to make it easier to use more decks without having minimal chance of encounters, please say so. It'll take some tweaking for the decks, but not too much. By the way, we'd love if someone could come up with a general idea for what should be where on what decks, as we're fairly stumped for ideas.

Like a post.

Its been suggested. Mahz liked the idea, so long as it is solely positive, no down votes.
From Comprehensive List of Requested Features:
http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/4287/posts/ooc
http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/4287/posts/ooc?page=1#post-62029

Outlaws of Varisia (Pathfinder)

'tis quiet 'ere...

was it this weekend or a weekday next week that Primal will be around to post?