Emeth

Deleted

@Martian I'm sorry to hear that but relieved to see you return! Even though I'm a stranger on the internet, expecting someone in a day or two and not seeing them for a month had me spooked. Take all the time you need to heal; I think I can speak for everyone here when I say the door will still be open when you're ready.

Ban the User Above You

Banned for not being an anime character. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

Harold's Academy for the Magically Inclined

Yup, slow day, sudden inspiration. Also perhaps just a bit too much sugar maybe.

Character Interview Questions

How do you respond to praise?

@BaileyBlue302

Federica Simonova - Demon Destruction Force, Class B

Ehh... Honestly, I don't know how to take it... I'm not great with compliments, to be honest. At least my boss is super blunt, so I know she's not trying to be mean when she says I'm "handy" to have around. I still get embarrassed, though... I still haven't told anyone that the cinnamon rolls I keep bringing to work are actually homemade. I'll probably get found out eventually... Oh well...

Hey, so... this is weird, but... got any advice on how to remember stuff? I feel like I forgot something really important...

Harold's Academy for the Magically Inclined

Lol no worries, Thanh and Nguyen are both pretty common names lol

@vietmyke

I like to randomize my characters' nationalities to anything non-European (just for fun variety), which usually puts me in the clear with names, but I guess it had to happen eventually! Vietnamese didn't give me a lot of options on the sites I usually use. I probably will change her name; my characters tend to go through some hard times and I don't want anyone to have to try not to imagine their family members going through the same.

Leah Eusebia Clearwater

Leah Eusebia Clearwater

Female | 17 | 5'8" (173cm)

House: Eusebia
Year: 5th Year
Chosen Pet: A Cait named Purrcival
Classes:

• Gifts
• Teamwork
• Artificing and Magi-Tech Advancements
• Seraphim Piloting
• Physics
• Apprenticeship and Support (Professor's Apprentice for combat related classes- General Combat, Daemons, Defense against Ni-Seraphi)

Mystic Classification: Psychiccer
Mystic Code: Telekineticist

A capable Psychiccer, Leah's primary talent revolves around using telekinesis to move and throw objects- and occasionally people- around. The concept is simple, yet effective, and is among the least 'invasive' of the Psychiccer talents- often having more in common with the various Elementalist talents. While capable of hefting heavier objects and people, Leah eschews sheer force for a more pragmatic and efficient use of her vitesse, often taking to a fight with a pair of heavy, oversized gauntlets, or a barrage of tungsten pellets. As a testament to her amount of practice, Leah is capable of fine control of her telekinesis, allowing her to strike with her gauntlets as though they were an extension of her own body. Using her gauntlets to strike from intermediate distances, Leah moves fast and strikes like a boxer, pummeling her opponents with a cascade of heavy, yet lightning fast jabs and combos to overwhelm their defenses, before swapping to even heavier blows and objects as a finisher. Defensively, the gauntlets can be pulled in to ward off blows, and should strikes get past her guard, Leah is physically fit and hardy enough to shrug off minor blows.

More practically, Leah is often seen using her gauntlets to carry around her books or belongings, or assisting her during research or work as a second pair of hands. The gauntlets will often write notes as she pours over textbooks, or checks her planner (notably, writing with her mind is faster than writing with her actual hands.) While capable of simultaneously controlling multiple objects, Leah's efficacy and fine control reduces exponentially as the number of objects increases.

Among other Psychiccers, Leah is regularly seen preaching the importance of physical fitness. After all, a strong body makes a strong mind- and a strong mind makes a strong Psychiccer.

Personality:
Brave, sensible, responsible, Leah appears every bit one would expect of a descendant of Eusebia, and a child of a Royal Guardsman. Confident, and just a bit headstrong, Leah aptly fills the the role that's been thrust upon her. Personable and friendly, Leah is seen as a role model by many. However, just behind the prim and proper facade, is a teenager, burnt out and exhausted by overwhelming expectations placed upon her by her family, the academy and her fellow students. Leah often feels alone, isolated from her fellow students, whether or not those feelings are misplaced. She fears that failing to be anything less than extraordinary means utter failure, and the fact that she was not designated as her house's Illuminaire for a 3rd year weighs heavy on her.

Leah is most in her element in classes and situations relying on physicality. While Psychiccers typically avoid physical conflict, Leah keeps in good physical shape, finding exercise and fighting as one of her few methods of therapy.

Generally not a stickler for rules anyway, Leah occasionally forgets that she's no longer the Illuminaire for her house, and wanders across campus during off hours from time to time.

History:
Leah Eusebia Clearwater is the granddaughter of Eusebia the Stalwart, a grand hero of the 72 Years Liberation War, and whom both Leah and an entire house of the academy is named after. Her father is General Artur Galahad Clearwater, a prominent commander of the Royal Guard. With such a pedigree, it wouldn't be a stretch for one to say that Leah was born for war. Seemingly groomed for such a role, even at an early age Leah was being prepared for an inevitable fight against the Ni-Seraphi. In her childhood years, Leah was instilled with the ideas of martial discipline, as expected of one in her stature, and lived in adherence to a strict schedule. Lessons, tutors, drills, etiquette, the best the Eusebia family could afford, Leah's day to day childhood was strictly enforced.

At the age of 13, Leah's powers began manifesting, to which her family took great pride in. Like her father, and his father, Leah was a Mystic. Also like her father, Leah was a telekineticist. Very quickly the Academy was contacted and Leah's potential was measured. They came to the conclusion was that Leah, a literal child, was destined for great things. The Academy was mandatory for Mystics, and thus Leah was admitted and sent off.

With the weight of her family's expectations already upon her, Leah threw herself headlong into her studies, forcing herself to meet said expectations no matter what the cost. When Leah wasn't in school, she was receiving private training from members of the Royal Guard- eager to win favor from her father. Skyrocketing to among the top of her house's rankings, Leah was even designated the Illuminaire for her house during her 3rd and 4th year in the Academy. To cap off her 4th year of school, Leah even bested a junior member of the Royal Guard in single combat. Riding that high, Leah returned home with her head held high, only to be deflated shortly thereafter. Even with all of the accolades and awards, it still didn't seem to be enough for her family.

Close to buckling under the expectations of her family, Leah approaches her 5th year with some measure of trepidation. She still hasn't told her father that she is not the house Illuminaire this year.

@vietmyke

OMG. I love all the ideas put forward so far, but this character art is so good I had to reverse image search for the artist. It matches the aesthetic of this RP so well IMO. It's getting me fired up to keep looking for something better for my own character.

Emeth is in Too Many RPs (Indefinitely Closed)

Thread is being temporarily closed to future inquiries from the time of this post. More details at the top of the OP.

Y'all are crazy! Thanks for all the interest this has received. Much love.

Harold's Academy for the Magically Inclined

@Emeth Thanh Nguyen is my aunt's name lmao

@vietmyke

Oh my actual God. Uh, should I change it? xD

Harold's Academy for the Magically Inclined

Interesting. So she's an Astra with a telempathy kind of power. Emma from Mutant-X had a telempathy power, so it could work. I think the way you described it is lovely and you'd be surprised what she could do in combat. She's a support role on the battlefield. She could use her telepathic threads to boost the teams morale, help two bickering teammates work better as a team, help someone whose given up to get back up and fight again. Don't shoot yourself short. :) In fact, with her spending so much time in the infirmary, maybe she can take up an apprenticeship under the nurse and become somewhat of the field medic during battles. But yes, I think whenever we're dealing with psychic powers that can influence others, we want to be wise and use that gift with caution if its to be used on other player-controlled characters. Perhaps getting permission on the front end is the best policy if not being used on an NPC.

Officially she'll be a Psychiccer. I'm actually not sure what she should be. I think both of her abilities fit into the category, but you did say almost all Mystics with The Kiss end up classified as Astras, and maybe the musical Ephemera (they have a name now) qualify as abstract enough to make the grade. I'll leave it up to you. I wanted something more clearly defined in its limitations to not raise many concerns about metagaming. I don't like the self-inserty "my characters know everything that I've read in your posts" kind of mind-reading.

I actually hadn't considered the bard angle, which is weird given the musical inspiration of plucking the strings. True, if push comes to shove she won't shy away from using her power to avert a crisis of faith in the group's leader or stop some infighting. Convincing someone to get back up and fight is a bit harder since I hadn't considered the possibility of one's relationship with themselves being a visible thing Thanh (she has a name now) could interact with. I could make ideas like self-esteem and confidence valid targets, but then I think I risk trivializing entire character arcs with that, just by everyone knowing Thanh could just solve it if she really wanted to. Learning first aid is an option; I was going to have her apprentice with the librarian because cute bookworm but I'll have to consider it. Also, a school counselor NPC ended up in her backstory, so maybe she could apprentice under them if that's an option that exists.

Permission is definitely something I'm looking for. It's baked in to the ability description that she's not skilled enough to get a string to 'sing' a person's thoughts to her consistently, so whether or not she can actually shake anything loose from them is completely up to the player whose character is being probed for information. If Thanh gets approved, everyone else should assume their character's thoughts are private until they tell me otherwise. Emotions are much easier to get but that's okay, she'll definitely keep your unrequited love a secret.

The Second Ability is cool too. Reminds me of an X-men character called ForgetMeNot, who had the power of imperceptibility. Though I think it's good that you put some limitations on it to keep it grounded. :) And I think it's possible she could use it to attend more than six classes. What she'd be doing is similar to what Hermoine did with the time-turner. Yeah, most Mystic's with the Seraph's Kiss keep one of their gifts hidden, IF POSSIBLE. Some people can't due to the nature of their magic. The school staff and Headmistress would definitely know about one of her gifts (I imagine the telempathy), how else would she be at the academy right if they didn't already know beforehand? lol

The Erasure ability (it has a name now) is the second ability she developed, but the first one to be discovered and the only one known to anyone except her and maybe the aforementioned counselor, along with anyone else on the "need-to-know" list. It surely has to come out eventually, but maybe not before the RP. Erasure might actually have too many downsides so I'd be interested in your opinion on it.

Time-turner is exactly what I was thinking when I added that. Like I said, cute bookworm.

I should probably stop rambling and just give the rough draft:

Thanh Nguyễn

Name: Thanh Nguyễn
Age: 14
Gender: Female
Height: 146 cm / 4' 10''
Weight: 45 kg / 99 lbs
Appearance:


House: Ivar
Year: 1st Year
Chosen Uniform: Fourth from the left, bottom row
Chosen Pet: A Gupoo named "Pooka"
Classes:

• Astronomy
• Sustained Flight
• Gifts (Learning Erasure)
• Herbology
• Cartography
• Pet Bonding (Attending in Secret)
• Music (Attending in Secret)
• Apprenticeship and Support (Nurse/Librarian/Counselor)

Mystic Classification: Officially, a Psychiccer
Mystic Code: Erasure
Thanh possesses the gift to erase her presence from the perception of others. This ability shares a few advantages with traditional invisibility, but also possesses a few unique strengths and weaknesses. On one hand, even her breath and footsteps cannot be heard, which is a bonus. On the other, passing in front of a strong light source will probably give her away by her shadow—and once her presence has been detected, she becomes fully perceptible again, and will remain so until she can break line of sight with all of her pursuers. Her ability also doesn't quite work unless there are at least 3 people in a room. If it's just her and one other person present, the other person will feel a sensation akin to 'being watched' which will foil Thanh's cloaked state. Currently, this ability usually triggers while she's sleepwalking or in fight-or-flight, leaving her unable to observe the world around her in a grounded, objective sense while cloaked. Most of her current training involves learning to become more 'lucid' while the cloak is active, so that the ability can be practically applied to reconnaissance and espionage. As she is now, it would simply be foolish to actually send her on such a mission. She's too inexperienced to obtain useful, accurate intelligence, and remain safe while doing so.

Mystic Code: Ephemera
Thanh can perceive the connections between people, mapped like constellations, visually represented as a complex web of threads perceivable only by her. The threads vary in color, texture, thickness and strength, and by touching them, Thanh can directly feel the emotions others feel towards each other—including any feelings they might have towards herself. By plucking the strings like an instrument, she may be able to hear the thoughts of the people connected by it, but she doesn't fully understand how to get this to work every time. (Read: participation in Thanh's 'thought-reading' is completely voluntary.) By implication, she should be able to manipulate these threads somehow, such as by strengthening or weakening them, or even outright creating new ones or destroying existing ones. However, Thanh is completely terrified of the implications of such a power—how she might use it to her advantage if tempted—or worse, how others may force her to use it, if they ever found out that she had this terrible gift. In fact, she believes that she's already seen what can go wrong if this is done improperly, and the resulting trauma left her extremely averse to the idea of ever touching those horrible threads ever again. Sometimes, however, an ambiguous face or comment is made, and she just can't help herself. After all, what if that person is up to no good, and someone gets hurt? What if that person intends to harm her, or worse—harm themselves? What if she could have prevented it? Thanh finds it less painful to violate both their privacy and her own personal oath to answer these questions than to let the asking torment her, and so, she knows she must come to terms with the existence of this gift eventually. For now, she's content to use it to understand people better, and to help find missing people and lost pets.

Personality: Owing to her known status as a Psychiccer (and many additional secrets besides), Thanh is more than a little bit timid around strangers. Combining this with her small stature, her demeanor often reminds others of a small animal, even when forcing herself to act bold and confident. She's carefully chosen classes that require the least amount of human contact possible, while still satisfying her mother's conditions for what counts as a "real class," but is attending her own personal interests on the sly using Erasure. She's passionate about the things she's interested in and is often buried in books, though sometimes this burial is more literal and also an accident. She has some kind of heart issue that she won't talk about, and is prone to sleepwalking at all times of day and night while invisible, giving the staff a bit of a headache at times. She's often caught wandering the school grounds at night, wandering outside the school grounds, attending classes she's not supposed to be in while nobody notices her, and generally being truant or absent. Anyway, aside from these silly little hiccups (that totally aren't her fault), Thanh is generally a well-behaved girl with flawless attendance and a completely clean disciplinary record (self-proclaimed). Those who get to know her well will learn that she is a sweet thing who wouldn't hurt a fly, an indefatigable optimist who just wants to be accepted, and would travel to the ends of the earth with anyone who would welcome her presence in their life. Though, it's hard to offer warm welcome to someone whose very existence can't always be perceived. That's... a work in progress.

History:

TW: Troubled Home/Parental Divorce Trauma

.
Thanh has had her magical gifts for at least six years, but nobody noticed until the regularly scheduled disappearances started. The first gift to manifest was Ephemera, and naturally, the first thing she decided to do with it was touch the threads connecting herself to her parents. It was a simple, curious act that any 8-year-old child would naturally do. She could directly feel the love flowing from them towards her, and it made her feel cozy and warm inside. Of course, this newfound power ended up being used whenever she felt down, and eventually she grew comfortable enough to try touching other threads.

The connection between her parents didn't feel soft and warm like hers. The thread felt frayed and chafed her fingers. She tried strumming it, and the things she heard... Alien words met her ears, but she could feel the heat of anger. She tried everything she could think to do to repair the thread, which wasn't much, and nothing seemed to work. Dejected, she returned to her own threads, feeling warm and fluffy but defeated at the same time. Having abandoned the problem, it got worse. Quiet resentment escalated into observable arguments. Again, she tried what she could, but the arguments only seemed to get louder, so she again stopped.

Feeling helpless, Thanh started to act out. She tugged harder on the threads connecting her to her parents, since they seemed stronger. Often, this resulted in one or both of the two going to her room to check on her. While it ended the arguments in the short term, it only seemed to make the problem worse in the long run. Eventually, she stopped touching the threads altogether, believing them to be the cause of all this trouble in the first place. In the end, she lost what she now realized had become her only source of warmth. Her deep sadness seemed to awaken something sleeping inside of her, and the next chapter of her life had begun.

When Thanh saw her parents arguing, it was as if they couldn't see her anymore. She had gained her second magical gift, Erasure, but she could not know it at the time. What she did understand was that she'd have to scream now to get her parents to stop. This only made things even worse, so instead she started acting out by slipping out the window and running away. To her horror, her parents didn't even seem to notice or care about her coming and going. It was like she didn't even exist anymore. She was quickly spiraling into a deep depression, and hit rock bottom when the inevitable divorce that she'd ultimately blame herself for finally happened—but thankfully, she wouldn't have to wait long for things to change.

By sheer, dumb luck that was surely owed to her by this point, a guidance counselor from Harold's Academy happened to be running errands in town when they caught Thanh suddenly bursting into tears and bawling her eyes out, shattering the illusion that had kept her hidden from right in front of their unsuspecting eyes. After some talk, it became clear that Thanh had had a magical gift for some time that had gone unnoticed, partly due to its very nature, and partly due to neglect at home. After a very difficult talk, Thanh learned that she would be required to attend the Academy to learn to better control her magical gifts.

She expressed the natural concerns about leaving her home and her friends at her previous school, to which the counselor offered a lifeline in the form of an address she could mail letters to, as well as some very impressively detailed directions to their office. With their help, Thanh was able to work up the nerve to return home and inform her mother about her circumstances. She was confused, thinking that Thanh simply spent all of her time in her room these days and didn't want to be disturbed, not even realizing she'd been leaving home all this time. Thanh felt crushed by this reaction in spite of everything she'd just learned about her gift, but the counselor helped smooth things over.

Thanh is looking forward to her new school, all things considered. Though it's a big change, she's choosing to welcome it, believing in her counselor's words that a new environment will help her to heal. Besides, going to a magic school sounds like fun! Aside from the keeping her Ephemera ability a secret, and her being formally known as a Psychiccer while secretly being an Astra with the Seraph's Kiss, and her mother high-key pressuring her to take the maximum amount of classes possible and excel in all of them, but aside from those things? Yes, aside from those things, she is very much looking forward to her new life as a Mystic!

Harold's Academy for the Magically Inclined

I'm not the most active in group RPs but I've only ever seen one member of one Discord server from this site stir up trouble. They wrote some stuff that broke forum rules and kinda ignored the main plot in general, so I consider them a pretty special case. I've never used Discord for anything else except keeping in touch with a few RL friends, but I could imagine random servers for subreddits getting pretty toxic. It's not an issue I've run into with RPGuild though, but alas, I do a lot of lurking in the 1x1 section mostly, so my opinion might not be the most representative.

I'm working on my character now, actually. Her ability that falls in the telepath/empath category is something I've wanted to play for a long time but never found the right RP for it. Basically, she can see the connections between people, visually represented as threads of various colors, texture and thickness. By touching them, she can directly feel how others feel about each other, and by plucking them like a stringed instrument, she might hear a stray thought or two. By implication, she should be able to manipulate those threads somehow, like strengthening/weakening or outright creating/breaking them, but because of some childhood trauma, she has an extreme aversion to messing with them too much.

She has another ability which works kind of like a heavily nerfed version of Koishi's ability from the Touhou series. She can slip away from the collective consciousness of everyone around her and become imperceptible, but there's tons of limitations on it due to her inexperience. It's probably more comparable to being Anonymous/Blended in Assassin's Creed if you've ever played or watched one of those. Basically, if she does anything that's too high-profile (like tripping over her own two feet), her cloak fails and she becomes perceptible again. I have a cute idea that she could be using this ability to attend more than six classes on the sly, but let me know if that's chronologically impossible.

I currently have a half-baked idea that she has "The Kiss" but one of her aeonhearts is kinda funky, so she intermittently loses access to one of her abilities and a good chunk of her vitesse. She spends an unusual amount of time in the infirmary as a result, which could lead to some inconvenient questions being asked. I'm thinking she hasn't been found out yet since one of her abilities is an easily kept secret and the other helps her escape unwanted attention. I think making her a first year would be fun too so there's that in the cards.

So, a mixed bag of pretty powerful abilities with pretty powerful weaknesses, and unlikely to see combat (of her own volition).

Harold's Academy for the Magically Inclined

The moment I read that part about Psychiccers being mistrusted I knew I had to have my character being either a telepath or an empath, and have them be a friendless girl with a privacy-invasive power, who tries to overcompensate by being bubbly and agreeable.

@Silver Carrot

I'll be crossing my fingers that my idea isn't too similar to yours!

I'm probably doing a character who's not very useful in combat. Hopefully that's okay.