Expendable

The Island of Ascension

Maybe just call it brawling? Focus on hand-to-hand, with improvised weaponry spliced in.

@Birdboy

I'm okay with calling it brawling, if you don't mind the occasional use of someone's prosthetic limb, the odd fork...

The Island of Ascension

@Expendable Is the hand to hand combat striking/kickboxing like Muay Thai or is it grappling like Jiu Jitsu? What kind of melee weapons is she good with?

@MikkPikkel93

Hand-to-hand combat is more like Jiu Jitsu. Muay Thai or Krav Maga is reserved for special forces units, not the grunts.

Melee combat is whatever comes to hand - beer mugs, belaying pins, brass knuckles, paintings, teapots, small kegs, nightsticks, spoons, etc. along with the usual grappling, punching, biting, kicking....

Your first memorable original character?

That would be Ïvêrrí Ólfwë-Ídèrrä, a northern wild elf who spoke maybe twenty words of Common, learned from traders after the amber her tribe would collect. Several shrunken goblin heads hanging from their hair were tied to her saddle horn, each still animated, their souls bounded to the chunk of amber inside. One would sort-of translate for her.

The Island of Ascension

Mags

Name: Magdalene "Mags" Vulpe
Age: 23
Appearance:
This lady has slanted blue eyes that are like two lagoons. Her luxurious, straight, collar-length hair is the color of black coffee, and is worn in a right-side parted pixie cut. She is very tall and has a lean androgynous build, so is sometimes mistaken for a man. Her skin is pale, except for reddish scaring on her right cheek, and a sword-shaped birthmark on her chest. She has a low forehead and high cheekbones.

Background:

Andrei Vulpe, freelance journalist, found the baby crying inside a dumpster outside an Atlantic City casino - but instead of handing her over to the police, he brought her home with him to his apartment, telling anyone who asked that she was his baby sister, his parents having died in a car accident back in Romania. And her name was Magdalene. His team, while disagreeing with his impromptu adoption, quickly arranged for documentation.

She was two, a toddler, sound asleep in her room when a curtain too close to the heater caught fire. A scrap of burning fabric fell into her crib, burning the right side of her face. Andrei stormed in with a fire extinguisher, putting out the flames, and took her to the emergency room. Mags recovered quickly, but there was scarring. One of her adopted aunts gave her a flesh patch to hide the scarring when she went to kindergarden, but it was itchy and she scratched it off in the classroom on the first day. Older kids seeing it named her "scar-face".

Every Sunday evening, for as long as she could remember, her father's six friends would show up and would read reports to each other, mostly their observations for that week, typically in Romanian but sometimes English and sometimes in something else. Andrei would collect them afterward. Wanting to be a part of that, Mags threw herself into her studies, practicing her penmanship with such zeal that her teachers had nothing but glowing praise with her class essays.

She then began writing her own reports, copying their style of an outsider looking in, and reading to them at the end of their meetings - in Romanian. Her adopted aunts and uncles praised her presentation, with a glowing Andrei adding her reports with the others.

Shortly after her twelfth birthday, they got a new neighbor, Justin Tyrell, a retired FBI agent who offered to babysit Mags when Andrei needed to go out to research something for his articles. While he had a lot of interesting stories, she couldn't help but notice he seemed very interested in her brother.

It wasn't too long after that she realized that she was being watched by strangers as she went to school, and they all knew her name. It freaked her out that she would cut classes, having to do summer school to make up for the lost work.

After graduating from high school, Andrei took her on a trip to Romania, where she made some friends - who took her drinking. Waking up one morning with a pounding head, she realized she was in some sort of barracks - somehow she got enlisted in the Romanian army. Andrei tried to get her out, but was reluctant to involve the American embassy.

Bootcamp taught her how to shoot a rifle, some basic hand-to-hand combat, and some wilderness survival. After training, she was assigned to the armory to repair and maintain equipment and weapons, as well as driving the unit commander's vehicle when they went to the field. By the time her enlistment ended, she was a sergeant, and received 520 Romanian Leu mustering out payment - which after conversion to dollars left her with $119.60.

Fortunately Andrei and the aunts and uncles paid for her ticket back to the states, but she realizes she needs a job.

When she got the offer to go to Alaska to learn magic, it tweaked her journalism interest.

HP: 32

Skills:

Combat:
Rifle: 4
Jiu Jitsu: 4
Knife fighting: 2

Support:
Wilderness Survival: 4
Weapon and field equipment repair: 4
Journalism: 2

Magic:
TBD

Equipment: Romanian army personal issue - M2017 field shirt, pants, and ballcap; O.D. field jacket, V-neck sweater with epaulettes, wool pants, socks, scarf, and gloves, rain cape; brown fur hat, black leather boots, black pistol belt, O.D. canvas duffle bag.

Items: Romanian Army bread bag, first aid kit, survival kit, 100MPH duct tape, 100ft O.D. parachute cord, Swiss army knife, zippo, lighter fluid, sanitary supplies, brush, two Moleskine notebooks, Pilot space pen, smart phone with chargers and cord.

Money: $119.60

The Island of Ascension

so it's ten points for each category of skills?

Magic school and homebrew dice system (Open)

I am looking for interest on multiple websites and might just run the RP on discord

@MikkPikkel93

I know this site would prefer you run this here, and certainly not on Discord although they don't mind you using it for group chat and discussion.

Are you okay with broken characters? Think like Dr. Strange traveling to Nepal to fix his hands, so the person is a bit dest

@Expendable The setting is in Alaska, I think a hoodie would be useful, haha, besides it's just an example of a character sheet.

@Synonym

I ask these sort of questions to sound out these concepts. Hoodies are warm, sure, but they do make body armor that looks like hoodies and the like. It's just expensive.

Magic school and homebrew dice system (Open)

It sounds interesting, but I can't help but wonder at how a black hoodie counts as armor? What weapon does it provide protection against?

Uncovered: Secrets of a Lost Age

@ExpendableThe rp is back up and ready to go if you all are still interested.

@Theyra

Thank you.

So this is like the Victorian age, or a steampunk version of it?

Lunar Dome 10

57104 - Yev

"Hmm? Sorry, Yev I didn't hear you. Something wrong?" Neilson asked, genuine concern in her voice.

Her finger tip was throbbing now with every beat of her heart. Why did it have to be the real one?

"I said," Yev replies, speaking louder as she put another shovelful into a bucket, "We gotta go down further, right? See how far this goes?"

Yes, down to the power core made in a Concern™ factory using the cheapest parts they could get.

She could feel a chill wash over her. Her bioplas coverall could seal up and protect her if the dome got punctured, but it wasn't going to anything if whatever cracked the floor also cracked the power core, spilling its radiation.

"Not that I mind this," Yev said, emptying another shovelful into the bucket

Lunar Dome 10

57104 - Yev

Yev tried to help Gwen, taking out the rubber mat that came packed in the repair sleeve to wrap it around the pipe, then biting off a yelp when the hinged cover pinched the tip of her middle finger as Gwen heaved it over the top of the pipe.

She wiped her finger off, then stuck the tip in her mouth as she watch Gwen flip the bolts into their slots and begin tightening them down. Her training videos showed how to do this with a wooden plug, the rubber mat and wrapping it in place with a ball of coarse string. This was so much easier.

Yev did wince when Gwen reported the leak as "repaired" - it was patched and returned to service. Later, in a couple of months someone would show up with a work order to cut out the damaged part, put up a new section of pipe, sealing it in place and then it would be repaired. Assuming the rats didn't get them. But she kept her mouth shut, shoving plastic bags inside empty five gallon buckets (why was there none of the bigger barrels?) and blousing them over the top edge so the edge stayed clean. Nobody liked being corrected and she didn't need a negative evaluation.

Picking up a shovel, she began shoveling the oily "kitty litter" into the prepared plastic bags.

"We're going to have to go down, aren't we?" She said quietly, trying to keep her voice steady. "To see how far the... crack goes?"

They probably went all the way down to the power core....

It's safe, she thought furiously. If it wasn't safe, Holiday's radiation alarms would be going off.

And how did one fill a crack in the concrete or fused lunar dust or whatever it was made of?