@Lewascan2 OK, I like the sheet. I just feel that she's a little too strong for the very start. Being a small universe is something I may have expected further down the road. I won't ask that you change anything for now. Would you accept a temporary nerf slapped on her for the start of the RP?
Sure. I wasn't certain where the line exactly was, but you seemed to want "anime character in the final fight of the last episode with the OP playing behind them" (with Simon from Gurren Lagann as the example in the post with said quote), so I aimed a bit high. What sort of nerf? The "being a universe" bit?
I will say that her being effectively a very very small universe was the idea (literally human-sized at the start), one that is slowly growing in power (and bigger on the inside), as her new state of being grows into its own, sort of like how Superman had to grow into his powers after absorbing years of sunlight. But that's slightly digressing.
Assuming we leave everything mostly as-is, an initial nerf would work. Perhaps gradually loosening power-constraints? Basically, most of her mana generation is tied up with maintaining and stabilizing her new exotic body while expanding its energy production, so she's a bit limited in when and where she should be expending her mana. Going anywhere near lightspeed for any significant period right now is something that's too energy intensive, and time travel is both mana-expensive and also extremely dangerous (or so she believes), since her body is rather experimental and its limits unknown should she put it up against more time shenanigans.
If we go this way, I could use a sort of escalating progression system to keep track of how her limits raise IC, perhaps something like her maximum "safe speed" (the speed she can maintain continuously without surpassing her mana regen rate much -if any-) starting at speed of sound and then increasing daily (or at some other time period) at an escalating rate. This is not to say that she can't go faster in emergencies, but her mana regen won't be able to keep up, and she'd be severely limited.
Doubling rate system(?): 767 mph + 2 mph, 4 mph, 8 mph, 16 mph, 32 mph, 64 mph, 128 mph, 256 mph, 512 mph, 1,024 mph, 2,048 mph, (Day 11 total: 4,861 mph/Mach 6-ish -slightly faster than supersonic), 4,096 mph, 8,192 mph, 16,384 mph, 32,768 mph, 65,536 mph, 131,072 mph, (Day 17 total: 262,909 mph -just barely 8k short of lightning strike speed), 262,144 mph, 524,288 mph, 1,048,576 mph, 2,097,152 mph, 4,194,304 mph, 8,388,608 mph, 16,777,216 mph, 33,554,432 mph, 67,108,864 mph, 134,217,728 mph, (Day 27 total: 268,436,221 mph -slightly faster than return stroke of lightning, the speed most people think of, being 1/3rd of lightspeed), 268,435,456 mph, 536,870,912 mph, (Day 29 total: 1,073,742,589 mph -1.6 times lightspeed), 1,073,741,824 mph, (Day 30 total: 2,147,484,413 mph -3.2 times the speed of light and casual time travel capable)
With this system, she once more reaches her prime and then surpasses in about a month. It's a bit of a slow start (heh), but the ramp-up later down the line is as appropriately powerful as one would expect from the characters in this story. Of course, this assumes this isn't too quick an improvement rate. I don't know what the IC timeline length will look like.
As a major point of note and sort of self-imposed nerf: I do want to say that despite time travel being the keystone of her ascension, it was always the plan to make all the IC justifications I can to ensure she doesn't use it except as the most absolute of last resorts. After all, only reason she ever tried it to begin with was when the alternative was her planet's genocide, and her method to stave off a paradox still cost her literally everything but her mind and soul. It's an extremely powerful tool... and an often double-edged sword, and I intend to treat it as such. And also, from an OOC story-telling perspective, I know very well how careful one must be with its utilization in order to not kill all sense of tension, so I've been planning on how to nerf it myself (a large part being Jen's inexperience with it), especially given that I'm sure its regular use would be quite annoying to both the GM and my fellow players.
Honestly, I only needed to hear "wizard of Oz" to stop asking questions. XD I'm halfway convinced that her Grimoire's powers rely on people knowing little about her, like a memetic thing.
Somehow, I don't feel Camelot rooming with Lumiere would be the best of ideas. They'd just grate at each-other if stuck in close quarters for long periods of time. XD
If there's anyone she's likely sharing a dorm with long term, it's Captain Goodhope. Runner up would be Lilac Shimmer.
@Dead Cruiser Full character sheet is still ever so slightly in progress, but here's the general summarized character pitch.
Jen is a black-souled/Perceiver human, whose mostly White Arts based magic is focused on the manipulation of the forces of Speed, which allows her to also perform some connected space-time techniques. She had dipped somewhat into Red applications but didn't fully take the plunge until it was literally a matter of saving her world. At that point, she attempted (and succeeded at) the fabled speedster time travel ability with a twist, accidentally apotheosizing herself in the process and basically becoming a veritable elemental of Speed in a humanoid form.
She lost a great amount of her mortality, as her "perfect time travel" technique relied upon her sacrificing her history/past existence in order to avoid a paradox. In order to not fall apart and defeat the opponent that prompted such a risky maneuver in the meantime, she crafted a new body from the fundament of Speed itself to act as a preservatory pocket for her memories and soul. As a result of this body, she now exists as a self-sustained island of existence within the normal timestream, allowing her to explore the more exotic applications of her magic at far less personal risk going forward.
She is unequivocally known as the "fastest woman alive" and is post-ascension practically a living embodiment of Speed, a hero forgotten by those she saved due to her time reversal. If there's a feat of speed in fiction or that can be conceptualized and pitched to her, it's feasible that she can pull it off or figure it out given time and experimentation.
Her motivations can be summed up as "I want to retire from war, dammit!" And in the short-ish term, she's willing to get into pissing matches with gods and far worse to finally have a lasting peace and quiet after spending most her life in a fight for her world's survival. (Un)fortunately, she has practically ingrained the urge to oppose evil when she sees it and finds she won't be morally satisfied with her own peace without ensuring prosperity for everyone.
Current CS:
Name: Jen Shiragami
Titles: Overclock, Fastest Woman Alive, Bane of the Heaven Seeker, The Deathlight, Vanquisher of the Unspoken, The Hero Who Never Was
Age: 21 physically... and a fair bit older mentally if one considers her living extended periods with an accelerated mind.
World: Earth Q is an Earth variant world once reduced to a post-apocalyptic wasteland by decades-long war with a Wuxia-style Invader, were it not for Jen's final heroic act during her ascension restoring it to a golden age of relative peace. Magic and supernatural abilities are a fairly new phenomenon on this world, barely 30 years old, and are thus poorly understood and with shaky foundations for training.
Race: A black-souled/Perceiver human(?), Jen developed from her youth a natural and intuitive connection to the forces of Speed. By all accounts she is otherwise a bog-standard human woman of Japanese descent... at least on the surface.
Form: Jen appears as a young human woman of what could be described as be Japanese heritage. As a result of her ascension, this appearance is more a thin veneer than anything. Having been forced to cast aside her mortal form in truth, the illusion falters when she uses her powers to any real degree, revealing a semi-ethereal blue humanoid being that appears to be more a living, moving galaxy than anything else.
Legend: Jen's world was woefully unprepared for an invader with the bullshit of a Wuxia protagonist behind them. A war of decimation with the goal of godhood was waged against her world, and Jen from the age of 11 found herself participating. The war went on for a full decade from her joining, and Jen's power over Speed was cultivated and mastered in that time, her personally confronting the Invader many a time and often being the only thing between her world and annihilation. She in many ways became the face of the resistance, and her very presence tended to at least guarantee that the enemy could not win outright.
Widely hailed as humanity's savior, she was a one-woman army, known to slay and save thousands in the blink of an eye, entire armies liberated or laid to waste at her leisure. Rumor said that should one have a way by which she may hear them and so much as call her name, she could cross the ocean to aid the besieged before the words ceased to flow. Her final battle with the Invader would see her finally initiating a last desperate stage of her personal cultivation, resulting in her victory, along with her ascension and removal from the entirety of her world's memory and history.
Will: Jen dedicated herself to heroism and war from a young age. Time and again she has fought for the sole purpose of saving lives and opposing an unparalleled tyrant of a madman. Despite having finally defeated said tyrant once and for all, she cannot lay such instincts completely to rest. That said, facing a new world with new people and evils, Jen can only feel a looming sense of... exhaustion. Having sacrificed everything for her world and spent half her life at war, Jen now desires to try living for herself for a change, to seek personal peace instead of peace for the sake of others. To that end, she intends to explore the new limits of her existence/body and shatter them all over again, to cast down any threat to her peace, and to finally have what she always reserved for others... hopefully without compromising her moral compass... much. It's time for the selfless hero to be a bit selfish for once.
Mastery: Jen has long cultivated a natural intuition for manipulating the primal forces of Speed, to a degree that steps even into the realm of space-time. Her mastery has seen her surpass even the speed of light and the flow of time itself, and her ascension has seen the obtainment of near-immortality through the stark transformation of her body to one more akin to an elemental of Speed than anything else. Broadly speaking, if one can so much as conceptualize a usage of speed, it's fair to assume she can make it happen -or figure it out if not; she is basically a living embodiment of Speed. However, her mastery is very much White Arts focused. Red Arts are comparatively unexplored territory for her.
Ascent: When faced with the genocidal ascension to godhood of the Invader that had long terrorized her world, Jen was forced to finally attempt time travel. In order to prevent a worldwide paradox and ensure success, she exploited her time-space manipulation through her mastery of Speed to sacrifice her own past/history. As a result, her body began to unravel from the self-contained paradox, and she was forced to craft a new shell of a body from the fundament of Speed around her while she reversed time.
In short, she successfully reversed time by more than a decade and assassinated the Invader in the moment they entered her world. However, her not yet completely stable form interacted with the forces laid bare by the Invader's dimensional technique, causing Jen to lose her grip on her world's timeline. Fumbling to stabilize her form, she began to Ascend, as she managed to work a solution together using her accelerated reaction time. Her form solidified, and a force like a sun being birthed within her propelled her uncontrollably forth into the next adventure.
During the Wuxia Invader's ascension ritual, a genocidal sacrifice was initiated, wiping out a large portion of the planet's population and ensuring the Invader's ultimate victory. Instead of allowing such an atrocity to pass, Jen was forced to use time travel. She was wary of causing a paradox, but it was the only thing she had left, and she had a theory about how she could make it work.
Speed of light remains constant irrespective of the observer. It is observed that as the speed of an object increases, time slows down. At the speed of light, time stops. And on further increment of speed greater than light, time reverses. Thus, to travel back in time we have to move faster than Light. And Jen's personal step: sacrifice her own timeline to ensure that her appearance in the past would not cause a paradox.
She didn't just erase the battle, the defeat. She reversed time all the way back to the exact moment the Wuxia Invader had arrived in her world years ago. As she did so, the disappearance of her very past caused her body to begin to come apart at the seams. In order to retain cohesion, she infused herself with the very concept of speed that flowed more freely around her now than ever before, crafting a new body from the fundament of the universe, a part of her mortality inextricably cast away to achieve a stable existence outside her own timeline.
She found the moment of the Invader's entry and attacked him with every bit of her fully cultivated power against his less experienced past self, a merciless barrage of high-speed vibrating attacks that reduced him forever to mere atoms. However, the Invader had still been resolving the effects of his dimensional technique when she struck. The combination of such a technique imploding and Jen's own state of still-resolving ascension and weakened grasp on her world's timeline caused her to be nicked by the collapsing technique and thrust from her world entirely, as her ascension solidified and completed in truth.
Arriving in a place unknown, she found that her very being had been fundamentally changed by the experience. In order to maintain her existence, she had not merely joined herself to the concept of Speed. No, for to join herself with her own universe's rules of reality would have resulted in her unraveling the moment she left. Instead, she had managed to transform herself into a sort of moving "universe of Speed" in the shape of a human. Her very being was a self-sustaining battery of an existence that molded and adapted itself to instead be fueled merely by Jen's own belief and perception of Speed.
Ephemera: The Speed Nexus: A self-sustaining existence within Jen's body of her own semi-unintentional creation. More accurately, her body is the nexus itself, a relatively tiny but growing and hyper-compressed "Universe of Speed" that acts as a protective shell/shield for her memories and soul to guard against the paradox that destroyed her original body. Through this and her own perception of her power, her body has become essentially a walking physical expression of the fundamental force of Speed. This body is a magical nuclear power plant, constantly utilizing the forces of its own existence to generate and store further power, which is partially put towards generation, escalating the speed at which it generates more ad infinitum.
This body doesn't possess an organic growth cycle and as a result is no longer is capable of aging. Nor does it require food, drink or air. However, the body is barely any more durable than a standard human's. This will likely change in time, as it grows in power and "density".
Loyal Fol-... Frien-... Honestly, it's cult: As a result of erasing her own history/past, very few from her home-world recall her existence, and she has been relegated more to myth than anything. That said, she is not the only being that can step beyond the reach of time, and several that remember cultivate her (presently false) image as a Goddess and search for ways to contact her or bring her home.
@Lewascan2 I'm gonna have an easier time with Ascent than I am with everything else.
For me, it's not that the Ascent itself is a difficult concept to explain, merely that it feels like it is the part that MUST be given due detail. It's the most significant and recent event for the character, and it just feels wrong to gloss over the details. Honestly, I've stripped away about as much detail as I can stomach by this point. All that's left is to figure out more efficient wording. By this point, comparing my CS to other sheets that have had no complaints on length, I think I'm good now.
Oof I'm getting carried away with the World section of my sheet lol.
Honestly, hardest part for me is the Ascent, since that seems to be the bit that requires the most context and is thus the hardest to compress while getting the idea across. I've been constantly editing the original version of my sheet and slowly whittling things down to something that looks closer to what Dead Cruiser wants, based on his example CS.
From the initial interest check post/thread, I didn't really get the vibe that this was intended to be a PvP-fest. I can definitely see PvP being allowed, and there's hints that it will be with agreement from both players, but I do get the vibe of there being an actual plot with an overarching threat that these characters will have to unite against.
To quote Dead Cruiser on the literal first page:
"PvP will probably occur at some point, but the rest of the RP will involve the characters encountering and dealing with that which exists outside of space and time, which should be a robust challenge even for the powerful characters we'll be playing.
However, it won't be all new frontiers. There is more to ruling than conquering, after all. As they say, enjoy the war, the peace will be terrible."
So yeah, definitely not intended to be PvP based. Allowed, yes, but there will absolutely be a "greater evil" it seems to unite them.
@Lewascan2 Yes, he's more likely to be the one to opt to work alone.
Honestly, we still don't really have an idea of what the main plot is. Despite all the innately powerful personalities of the characters, there's every possibility of them being initially confronted with a threat enough to actually keep them united... at least temporarily.
@Lewascan2 He can't enlighten her therefore either he doesn't see a reason to engage with her, speed is chaotic not orderly or understandable.
*Enlighten as in rip her soul from her flesh to be free of her prison.
I can already see we're off to a lovely start. So much team cohesion. XD
I'd imagine that would be quite the task for him. After all, he would be basically trying to rip a universe apart (though a small one, granted), which is essentially what her body is. In order to exist the way she does, she had to become her own sort of self-contained universe that contains and emits nothing but Speed, allowing her to operate as a sort of island in the normal timestream. It's the only way she can exist after literally purging her own past/history. Her body acts as a shell/shield from the effects of her own time travel paradox. Which is to say nothing of the difficulty of actually hurting someone that is... well, she ascended by time traveling after all. Light speed is a thing she can and casually does now. Basically, assume that if there is a speedster feat in comics, she can probably pull it off too, because "Speed given form".
@Lewascan2 You see to the Architect the world, no the universe is imperfect or even ugly. The flesh is barbaric, and obsolete. A world of perfection will only be capable of becoming reality once the new world is born.
Interesting. Then I wonder what he would think of my character, a human who ascended past flesh into a state more similar to being an elemental of the force/concept of Speed itself.
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