Lewascan2

Grimoiric Heart

@Lonewolf685
The main problem with going after Camelot is that she's this weird combination of almost bipolar in some ways, as described in her CS. Granted, I'm sure it'll be interesting to see the attempt, so I'll try and help you out, but Camelot will be a genuinely difficult target compared to the rest of the girls, probably as hard as Lumiere in her own way (though, this just might end up being more encouragement to go after her). Lumiere has experience, but Camelot had some of the most dogged and unrelenting paranoia around.

Gold:
You're right, her radiance is clear to see... too much so. She's at her core so self-sacrificing that she simply has no desire for gold. Even disregarding her paranoia, she just doesn't value it, not really. It doesn't help her, and it doesn't help her people. The closest you might be able to get is, yes, probably a coin from Camelot, but there are a couple problems with that: the first of which being that she'd likely near immediately sell it off, since money helps her people more. She's also something of a tomboy and doesn't value gold as jewelry and the like and would have no reason to keep it personally. She's just not greedy. In fact, it's easy to say that she is the opposite. She believes that she is so blessed that she has little right to recieve more than she has and will often insist wealth goes to others. The only way she's likely to keep it is if it has some kind of very practical use or is a source of knowledge; the gold part simply doesn't factor into her value of it at all... and in fact, in some ways makes her even less likely to take or retain it.

Paranoid:
While as Camelot and even in her civilian form, she can be quite amiable, most people would not for a second realize that she is one of the most paranoid magical girls alive under the surface. She considers being a magical girl to be very dangerous, and despite having pretty much literally no proof after a whole 2 years, she doesn't trust the Grand Ministry as far as she can throw them, which is to say, not far at all. She tolerates the arrangement because it is convenient, but she is a hardcore American at heart and doesn't trust anyone with the kind of power the Grand Ministry has while seemingly answering to no one. As an extension of this, her knowledge of the Grand Director's Merlin Grimoire has made her even more paranoid, as she has assumed (whether correct or not) that said person is a precognitive, which is all kinds of awful to Camelot's desire to choose her own destiny. Camelot's paranoia is absurdly touchy in regards to "things that seem too good to be true", so unless one is very careful about how they approach her, a combination of her paranoia and self-recriminating nature will likely make her reject spontaneous gifts or mysterious alliances as a matter of course. Though, to be fair, she is biased against the Ministry, so that could be an angle.

Honestly, one of the funnest parts about this might be the realization that Camelot really is as genuinely and stubbornly a paragon of justice as she seems. She has her temptations, but the core of real goodness is often such a firm rejection of such temptations as Camelot engages in at nearly all times.

Sum up your week in roleplaying in just 3 words

Excalibur go brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!

Avonshire - D&D Based Adventure

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Hugh Caphazath Half-Elf, Monk (Way of Shadow), Level 3 HP: 24/24 Armor Class: 17 Conditions: NA Location: P12 -> M9 Action: Pass Without Trace (whole party) Bonus Action: N/A Reaction: N/A

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Luckily, Hugh’s almost hurried and emphatic assertion that the mule and cart should remain behind didn’t appear to come off as rude. In fact, the moment it was mentioned, the rest of the group seemed to accept and adjust for it without a second thought. Hugh couldn’t help letting out a quiet sigh of relief at the unanimous prevalence of common sense.

The tiefling seemed all too excited for what was to come, to be honest. Hugh watched with mixed trepidation and interest, as she cast her magic, a shimmering film of a barrier settling over her body. In his experience, such a barrier was not good at taking blows head on. In other words, it acted just like real armor, much more useful when angled against blows and tested sparingly, as the user did their best to dodge most blows instead. In response to her proposal, he hummed, “Better still, why not see about trying to fire off all at once? If your attack doesn’t finish off the archer, then perhaps mine will.”

Marita proposed a revision to the initial plan that Hugh saw no reason to contest. He was out of practice working with groups, but in hindsight, making sure he only had to protect a single spellcaster seemed ideal. Although…

Victoria seemed somewhat put off by the idea of skulking around, claiming her abilities would best be used in the open. In that case, putting aside any personal dislike… and ignoring that utter nonsense about ‘heroes’... “Why not just remove the middleman?” Hugh opined, frowning. “I’ll take the tiefling, and Victoria can head straight for the frontlines from the get-go. Besides,” he nodded his head at the probable warlock, “her magical barrier and demonstrated agility mean she’ll likely be less vulnerable if she and I get swarmed by stragglers.”

He shook his head at Kathryn’s naive suggestion. “They are, at this very moment, eating a sentient being. ‘Modern justice’...” He barely withheld a scoff, but the dismissiveness towards the idea was clear. “What are we meant to do? Arrest them? They would face the noose or the block for their crimes regardless. Of that, there is no question.” He raised a single brow. “Or are you perhaps suggesting we have them throw down their weapons and send them on their way with a promise of good behavior? No, there are some lines you simply do not tolerate being crossed, and we are long past them.”

“Now then,” he brought up a final thought. “As I mentioned before, I can use my Ki to give us an edge in getting the drop on them. In particular, It is my intent to infuse all of us with the essense of the world around us, in part causing us to become one with the natural Ki of the world. I will hear any objecters now and exclude them from the effect.” After a long moment, he hummed. It seemed none were opposed. In that case. “Very well. Hold still, and don’t give what happens all that much thought. This may feel… strange.”

With his left hand still occupied by his bow, his right rose before his chest. Muttering under his breath, his hand cupped, then fisted, then knifed down, before slowly spreading out into a downwards-facing palm, helping him to shape his cultivated life force, as it began to seep out of his body. As this occurred, the shade cast by the forest canopy and Hugh himself almost seemed to writhe, the air gaining a strange taste, like all who were breathing it could not seem to draw it in, yet still managed to breath unhindered all the same.

The air almost seemed to grow hazy -yet not-, as it rippled outwards into a slowly growing radius around Hugh, the writhing of the shadows spreading to every new one they touched and then deepening in a manner that somehow invited no attention. No, despite the fact that something strange was going on, all within and underneath the effect could see and feel clearly. But even so, allies or not, one could not help but find their gaze almost accidentally passing over their own comrades uncomprehendingly, almost as if seeing through them and yet knowing implicitly that they were there.

“Good, it seems to have worked,” Hugh’s warbled voice almost sounded like it was coming from underwater, like the very air was trying to swallow his words the moment they left his mouth. “The technique is a bit indiscriminate, but I can at least control who it affects. Once you leave the radius, it will falter, but if you need to become concealed again, just return to me. The effect is constant so long as I can maintain it.”

With that, he nodded and hunched, beginning to slowly move north-westward, the grass leaving not a whisper in his wake and even springing back into place as though it had never been disturbed by his passage at all. He crept forward till he could sidle up behind the western of a pair of trees just up the road on either side of it. As he moved, the radius of reaching shadows and strangeness went with him and then halted in turn, just barely managing to keep the rest of the group within itself.

Grimoiric Heart

<Snipped quote by Lewascan2>

Sad, but probably true.

In case you couldn't tell, Olivia has some... issues...

@Ponn

Oh, very much so! A small portion of which appear to be part of her transformation, which will be... fun to explore going forward.
Camelot has a bit of an interesting perspective on Alter Magical Girls, since it seems like so many of them's Grimoires mess with their users mentally... or only go to people that are a little bit... off to begin with.

And after this post, I think I'm finally starting to understand what Olivia's CS means by "bizarre" interests. XD
On a somewhat related note, the "Beast" is fucking terrifyingly strong, which I understand is a little rich coming from the person that chose "King Arthur" for a grimoire, but damn. Eldritch entities don't screw around. No wonder she only (technically) has two powers as a Legend-tier Grimoire. XD

Grimoiric Heart

@Villamvihar
And the Good Captain posts! You love to see it.
Lmao, looks like Olivia won't be getting those cheekrubs any time soon. XD

Also...

And she can not even summon the entire Flying Dutchman yet!

@Villamvihar

"Yet," you say? I can sense Stripes' ulcers forming already.

Grimoiric Heart

<Snipped quote by Lewascan2>

Is discord not a single location/site? /s
I personally like discords for rps, but I understand when people don't, so I'll abstain from voting.

@The World

I mean, I like having everything on this site alone, where the text coding is, you know?

Like I said, I'm pretty medium. Could go either way. Just pointing out what I like about the current arrangement.
I can certainly see Discord (through the app and such) making conversation a lot more rapid fire and easy to respond to, but it's nice having all my alerts and information related to the RP on just this site.

Grimoiric Heart

<Snipped quote by BrokenPromise>

Make no mistake, it wasn’t an admittance of fault. I love long posts, including deep explorations of a character’s psyche and what they think of others via the five senses aka long monologues, then whether it is proceeded by a long or short series of actions is irrelevant, both are good for me.

Unless you specifically tell me that kind of post is against the rules (of a particular RP), then I’ll most likely keep doing it simply because I enjoy writing it. :P

@Izurich

You love to hear it.

You're gonna have a field day analyzing Ozma.

@TheWendil

If she's even halfway as mysterious as her namesake, I imagine so.

@Lewascan2 Well, whatever you're doing, it's working. There are some people who are very good at writing inner monolog and I can honestly read pages and pages of it because it's interesting to me. So I really wouldn't worry too much.

Her fighting style and preferences are still something I'm workshopping, but it's probably something like "what's most ideal for the situation." I haven't read Camelot's sheet yet, but there are few people that Stripes synergizes poorly with, especially if the team is small. And then there's Goodhope.

@BrokenPromise

Why thank you! To be honest, I personally think I've had a problem for a while with overdoing internal monologues, so I've been trying to get better at it. It's nice to see that improvement is bearing fruit.

Camelot, in conception, was intended to be a "tank" of sorts for the team; though, this intro wasn't exactly the best way to showcase those talents. Her throwing her sword is not a normal thing -or at least, not intended to be, more a desperation move if she can't get close, since there's the risk she may not be able to easily get ahold of her weapon again without retransforming. She much prefers to be up close and personal, drawing attention and just generally keeping everyone around her as untargetable as possible by blinding enemies. Though, it does seem as though she may end up panning out in a somewhat different direction than I was intending. We'll see as the story develops.
Lmao, Goodhope will continue to Goodhope.

On another note, I've been wondering if I should make a Discord server for this RP given the small number and to better funnel conversation. If that's something people would want, I'll consider it.

@TheWendil

I'm with Izurich on this in that I'm pretty medium and could go either way. We seem to be doing relatively fine as is so far.
Discord has some potential for sure in terms of facilitating discussion or even collaborative bits, but it's sort of nice to have all the relevant information contained to a single location/site if that makes sense?

Grimoiric Heart

@Lewascan2 It's a weird deal. I mean yea, you want to let your fellow players know that you acknowledge their existence, but if someone does something less fantastical, I don't always feel the need to include it in my post. especially if there's already other people reacting to it. Though it also depends on who's writing and why. As for timing, I have some pretty funny stories about that, but I think everyone perceives it differently.

We'll see about their relationship. Stripes has plenty of reasons to hate and like her.

I'm not exactly sure how her skill spread will look going forward. I do think it's possible her core "anti-friendship" power might become more nuanced, but she's probably always going to be better off in smaller teams over "magical girl napoleonic warfare." The thing about the skills she learns is that while she'll have the most diverse abilities over time, she won't really be able to use some of these abilities like the original people can. As an example, if a pageless or magical girl can manipulate fire, stripes might learn how to cast a fire ball or some single spell from them. But that's really more at the GM's discretion.

@BrokenPromise

For me, I try to consider if my post is going to flow well. Personally, I find managing timey-whimey shenanigans to be draining if it goes on for very long, so I usually try to streamline things in a general summary of events from their POV. I do tend to make exceptions for significant actions others take that just wouldn't make any sense for the character to not comment on specifically though.

As for the interactions, yeah, I can definitely see the ways they might grate at each-other or alternatively get along. It might be a bit of a coin flip honestly. XD

Ah yes, I was referring to "complimentary skillsets" in the sense that it assumes it's only the two of them working together in a duo or trio. Obviously, that may not be a likely/common occurrence, but that was the direction I was thinking in. On the other hand, the vibe I got from her so far is that she doesn't favor a ranged "blasty" strategy unless she has to and really likes her tiger form and assassination, so in that respect, the scenario I was considering is also defunct. And yeah, I did get the vibe that her powers more take a single "ingredient" from a target power and condense it into something she can use? It's a little variable, I'd imagine, since there's some level of DM fiat involved.

Grimoiric Heart

Hey, different strokes for different folks, I will tell you that I love reading and writing long posts, including multi-chapter novel posts like this. I read everything from feast to beam blast, this shit is my jam.

That was an epic post, Lew, nice work.

@Izurich

Why thank you!
Though, it was less a beam blast and more her just chucking her sword at the thing. XD
But yeah, I definitely don't want to break up the flow of the narrative whenever possible. While it's pretty much a given that my posts will be longer on average than the others (since I tend to be very detail-oriented), there shouldn't be any more absolute behemoths anywhere comparable to this until Camelot is both not in combat and/or currently not occupying the same scene as many -or any- of the other characters, which should hopefully be a rare-ish occurrence.

I use to write posts that size on the regular, but I don't anymore because I participate in too many different RPs. So long as it's not two sentences of action padded out with four paragraphs of inner monolog that just reiterates what's already been established, I'll read without complaints.

But yea, not a bad thing to spend a lunch break reading. I liked Thomas's reaction to Cammelot's warning and her summery of Stripes's powers.

@BrokenPromise

I do try to do my best not to repeat information needlessly. I also try to avoid timey-whimey shenanigans when able and actually progress the narrative, but sometimes, you just kind of need the character's personal perspective. Helps contextualize their future decisions and such, at least for me.

But yeah, LMAO. Two sentences of action vs 4 paragraphs of monologue? Now that's a cursed ratio if I've ever seen one. That much text with so little payoff? Yeah, the inner monologue can work, but it's got to actually be relevant and mostly lead into payoff for the situation at hand to not feel like a slog.

And thank you! Personally, I think Camelot and Stripes might actually get along more easily than some of the others. Just a feeling, but I think Camelot's general awareness of -and willingness to work around- Stripes's rather unfortunate limitations will engender some level of comradery (or at least tolerance, lol). I think it helps that the two of them's skill sets are very complimentary, allowing Camelot to take the heat and attention and Stripes to spam [Magic Missiles] and such, especially if Stripes's power spread is based less on how many people she's working with and more on how physically close they are to her. If it's more conceptual in nature (like it seems to be), then that's unfortunate but fair... considering the whole "Unlimited Skill Works" thing looming in her future.

And depending on how her skill creation works, she might be able to learn more permanently full-power ones by training/sparring with Camelot (or any of the other girls for that matter). Even if it's only limited to one skill per target, she could probably learn something related to martial arts from her (or something more exotic, considering other magical girl powers are apparently valid targets).

Grimoiric Heart

Lmao, sorry. Had a lot to go through, and I'm a wordy writer. Everything after this shouldn't be near as long, but I'm the sort to actually accidentally write a ton. I can guarantee that when it comes to smooth combat posts, there should be no issues with ridiculous length going forward. It's just that this one unfortunately happened to be the character intro post simultaneously.

As an aside, if you want to skip the character intro and just need what may effect your own post, the only bits that are technically relevant to the immediate combat events are everything following the massive f-off huge words near the end (and maybe a tiny bit of the section before that). The vast majority of the post is character intro/establishment/the IC explanation for why she didn't arrive with the rest of the group.