You wake up to a light shining in your eyes.
"Ah, good! Consciousness. Excellent." With a click the light is gone, leaving spots in your vision. While your surroundings come into focus, you hear the whirr and hiss of steampowered machinery, bubbling water, and the scribble of pen to paper. A coppery, burning smell fills the air.
You were sure you had died. Is this a hospital?
"Open up. Say 'Ah!'" A tongue depressor invades your mouth. "Very good. Move your fingers? And your toes. Full motor capability, good. Echo one one six, successful transmutation, body intact, subject is conscious and retains understanding of language."
Your vision clears. You're lying naked in a glass-and-metal pod, staring up at a stone ceiling crisscrossed by pipes and gears, dimly illuminated by dusty caged bulbs. There are bigger machines around you and more pods like yours -- some of them filled with unmoving bodies.
"Now then, hello! Please don't panic." The sprightly voice belongs to a small sandy-haired man wearing thick funny goggles with a dozen interchangeable lenses. "I'm Doctor Kelodie. You're quite safe and very much alive. What do you remember? Let's start with your name."
concept
The land of Roon is under attack by the enormous and powerful Monsters of Draconic Origin (MODO) which appear and disappear unexpectedly, leaving swaths of death and destruction in their wake. Conventional weapons and elemental technologies have no effect on the MODO, and the monsters' unannounced appearances render all evacuation efforts useless.
Out of desperation, researchers and mechanikers have turned to the ancient myths for help: the story of the origin of all things created out of Nothingness, the Dragon Ashig-Morool who hungered to devour the Nothingness, and the unnamed hero who returned to life from death, who drew upon the power of Nothingness itself to shatter Ashig-Morool into nine lesser monsters that were imprisoned and laid to sleep, scattered throughout Roon.
It had been just a story, until the MODO began to wake.
In theory, a person who is brought back from the dead will retain a connection with the Between: a plane of existence between life and death, where ghosts and daemons reside. Using this connection -- in theory -- this person could call those daemons into reality, to utilize their inherent magics and power to combat the MODO. In theory, this person might even trap and control the MODO themselves by the same methods.
By abandoning morality, the mechanikers have devised a way to return the dead to life. They are called Echoes, and they are the only hope of civilization.
character
You were dead. Now you're alive. Your body is flawless and new, but it is undoubtedly your own.
The mechanikers have no means of choosing which souls they bring back from the dead. The only restriction is the person must have died within the previous twenty years, and within a radius of one hundred miles of the laboratory.
Characters will have grown up in the Kingdom of Sink, in a time of clockwork technology and budding steam-powered machines. The kingdom is enormous: it encompasses several towns and numerous villages, each with its own history and flavor, as well as a vast mountain range, deep forests, a dead wasteland in the south and the coast along the sea.
Character histories may be based on any number of possible environments that could exist within the kingdom, but please note that anything and everything that you come up with outside the character itself -- including places, organizations and NPCs -- are forfeit to GM control and manipulation. As GM, I retain the right of full creative power over everything but your own character. Please keep this in mind before you create your own NPCs and towns.
Characters may be of any age, but must be human. Characters will start out with no possessions whatsoever. Characters who are disinterested in the storyline and are not inclined to participate in the storyline whatsoever are not prohibited from doing so, but You're Gonna Have a Bad Time. Please take note as you're developing your character's personality.
gameplay
Your character is an Echo: someone brought back from the dead, who can see into and interact with the Plane Between Life and Death (referred to as "Between"). This means your character can see ghosts and daemons. Ghosts are exactly what you'd imagine them to be. Daemons are strange and sometimes powerful creatures that can't interact with reality and are invisible to everyone but the Echoes. To your character, they are as alive as any other animal -- your character can see and touch and hear them, and they can see and touch and hear your character.
As an example, let's say your character is walking down the road in the company of another person who is not an Echo. Suddenly, a little beast with scales and fur and long teeth leaps out of the foliage and attacks your character. To your character, it is a fight to the death. To the person walking alongside, however, it looks like your character is swatting at nothing, and probably thinks your character is more than a little crazy.
At the beginning of gameplay, your character will be given a bag of pebbles: uneven little colored stones that are made of pure Nothing, the source of everything. By touching a weakened or willing daemon with a pebble, your character can bind that daemon into the pebble. With a little concentration, your character could then summon the daemon out of the pebble and into reality.
So, back to the road example. Your character captures the daemon into a pebble. Just as your friend starts to call your character crazy, your character summons the captured beast -- and now it exists in reality, and the friend can see and touch and hear the creature just as well as you can.
These summoned daemons are the only things that are capable of harming the MODO. It is possible to capture a MODO in the same way, if you'd rather not kill it -- but perhaps you'll need a bigger pebble.
Characters may want to travel to new areas to find different types of daemons, or daemons with greater power. They will have to be vigilant and aware of their surroundings, willing to follow clues and solve mysteries to piece together what's happening and why.
They will chase down the MODO and prevent them from further destruction, but the core of the story lies in the reason the MODO are waking in the first place. Something is Happening, and it's up to your characters to figure it out and decide what to do about it.
rules
Questions and ideas are always awesome. The OOC is a friendly and happy place at all times. Any concerns, complaints or objections should be sent via PM to the GM, and I'll do my best to help you out directly. I maintain a no-tolerance policy against hostile or hateful comments in the OOC.
Antlers,
Shifter_Master,
Neziul,
Iluvtoji,
IAmTheIsland,
Bugman,
Passable Writer,
Fetzen,
Not a Sayan,
Stanifly