NuttsnBolts

Candy

We don't normally take candy from strangers, but in your case we'll make an exception.

Enjoy the forum and if you need anything we can always help.

• 葉隱 •

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The silence of the blackened night had begun to fade, a stillness replaced with tranquillity of rye susurrated by the warm morning air. As the sun peeked its vibrant crest over the horizon a golden hue flooded the land like paint to a canvas. It had broken dawn, and amongst this life giving moment was a timber bullock cart, trudging through the farmlands as it was pulled forth by a muscular, white beast. Only the sound of the heavy, oak wheels carving their way through the dirt could be heard by any onlookers — a list that comprised of cicadas, rabbits, and a lone pheasant looking for its dayspring meal.

There were three occupants who sat within the compound of this old cart; three occupants who remained quiet as they felt the crushing clumps of dry soil resonating through the wagon. The leader of the trio sat at the forefront, head buried deep down within his chest as he rocked sleepily from side to side. A question as to whether or not he was truly an awake individual was only answered by the occasional slapping of his cane on the rear hide of the bull. Without warning, a sudden cockcrow of a cough emanate from his chest — a cause assumingly connected to the rye dust carried by the wind — signalling to the passenger pair it was both a time to awaken, and time for a well deserved drink.

"Here you go, grandpa." The younger passenger broke the first words of the day as he leaned over with a bamboo flask. The old man took a swig, filling his mouth with cool water in order to suppress the uninvited lurgy. Once satisfied that the miracle liquid had cured his ailment, he passed the container back to his grandson only for the boy to look towards the final cart occupant, gulping nervously with a more than generous proposal. "You can have some too, if you wa—"

"She doesn't get any—" gruff, cold, and demeaning. The old man sliced through the act of civil kindness harder than a Hattori Hanzo blade, "—that little thief."

Uzuki grimaced with humility as she heard the low-blow comments of mockery, curving her lower lip between her teeth and nipping at the soft, fleshy brim. She peered down at the rope around her wrists; those tightly bound wrists that always held the dark desire to landed her in such a precarious predicament. There she noticed a deep, salmon coloured irritation which begun to spread its way across the skin surface.

Opposite Uzuki the young boy sighed softly with a disappointing and obedient "Yes grandpa" reply; slowly realising that his naive innocence must have gotten the better of him. It just so happened that Uzuki turned out to not be their friend, nor were they her's, and how it all reached this point was through her own, selfish actions.

* * *

The thief landed on her knees, the bottom of her once silky, white dress now tinted in with all the colours of the wet earth. In the dirt before her laid her all too familiar Tanto knife, alone and eagerly awaiting for her much desired companionship. Uzuki turned her head to espy the twain from beyond the rim of her kasa, watching as their wagon made a steady gait toward the hill's horizon. The longer she watched, the more it would dip beyond that thickly defined mound until they were eventually out of sight, already becoming a distant memory for 'The Lone Pine'.

In this lonesome whereabouts Uzuki oddly found herself thankful, grateful for a level of hospitality to which she didn't deserve. She staggered her way across the soil to her discarded knife, a surly gift left by the old man before telling her to never return to their land, and clutched the hilt with her clammy hands. With a gentle motion she rolled her wrist back and forth along the downturn blade, fraying the rope edge on the honed steel. With each movement she could feel the pressure easing from around her wrist, the warm circulation gradually returning to her fingers, and the screaming ecstasy of her hands once again being freed.

"Where to now?" the audible thought escaped Uzuki's lips, knowing the solution should have been as clear as the morning she was admiring, and yet the answer she held was as clouded as a dark and stormy evening. The town of Tōtōmi was such a location where she could stay, half a day's travel along the river stream and across the Hana Valley; if only she knew how easy it was to find.

Slowly and surely Uzuki lifted her rattled body to its feet, and with a light pat she dusted off the surface dirt — only leaving the remaining marks which had managed to ingrain themselves into to finely woven fibres. She had looked better before, but at the same time looking worse was also a very real possibility. No one would look twice and with her seemingly natural ability to blend into the crowd, and appearing a tad shabby was the least of her worries.

Another day, another venture. And with more and more mistakes pushing her north it would only be a matter of time before Uzuki would reach the capital of Tsukishima, the famous City of the Emperor.

I'm bad at being a GM and I want my character in a roleplay. Please help.

If anyone has any suggestions for @BuffBowser, they can post them up over here.

also needing help with deletions....

Removed.

There was a trial for self deletion but it landed in several errors, so for the time being it was deactivated until he's ready to rework on it.

The Never-Ending Game of Dungeons & Dragons

Can't believe one of our modderators is one of those pesky D&D bots.

@BrokenPromise

Next up we will have "10 ways to improve your D&D character", and it will be 10 clicks to get information that's a sentence long and offers no insight. xD

The Never-Ending Game of Dungeons & Dragons

If only some of us have the same success as this guy.

New people joining, but the number of onliner people stays the same?

So there are a lot of factors here that can influence the overall results.

Firstly, you are correct that there are a lot of people joining as I'm seeing a list daily of maybe 6ish people a day joining and the spam filter hasn't really been that active lately. In saying that the spam filter works on IPs and select information, like URLs and duplicate posts. Meaning that it may not trip until a not actually posts (or someone new accidentally uses a weird URL or double post in their first few messages).

This means that there is a chance that some of these accounts may be what we call silent bots, bots that don't activate until later on in an attempt to avoid the regular scans that forums have on new users.

However, of the ones that aren't bots... a portion of those have jumped into PM 1x1s. We can see this as each user has a Post count and a PM count that is kept private from the public's view, and some of these users have already made it into the hundreds.

Keep in mind though that, as mentioned above, the Online members count doesn't include Invisible users, nor will it really show people who have logged into an Alt account instead of their main. The count only shows a period of 15 minutes so unless a back to back log in is used by a person with an Alt, their count will be marked as 1 instead of 2.

Staying on topic with User counts and how it's a 15 minute internal... this is a choice by Mahz instead of Dailys as I believe it helps to show current activity rather than a daily summary. When I started this post it was sitting at 164, now it's risen to 172, but in an hours time it could drop down to 80. It's too much of a variation to make the theory that the forum is gaining or losing activity and even without these figures there's a lot happening in real life that may impact the overall activity. Halloween is on around this time, Thanksgiving is coming up, and I know Australia has all their exam periods starting soon too. This time of year does get a bit slow and last year's NaNoWriMo distracted a few people too.

Pretty much I wouldn't worry too much about the numbers and figures at this point in time. Yeah they're important but if you use one form of data to judge a forum's activity then you miss out on countless info that may be playing behind the scenes.

• 葉隱 •

_{Ｎ Ａ Ｍ Ｅ}

Okano, Uzuki
_{❖ 岡野 - hill / field, area
❖ 疼き - ache, twinge}

_{Ａ Ｇ Ｅ}

Twenty Three

_{Ｔ Ｏ Ｔ Ｅ Ｍ}

Black Pine

_{Ａ Ｐ Ｐ Ｅ Ａ Ｒ Ａ Ｎ Ｃ Ｅ}

^{Clothing | Kasa Hat
Tessen | Tanto Blade}

Uzuki is a woman of average height, with long brown hair, and a facial complexion that feels soft and youthful; yet it continually portrays the immanent undertones of danger and malice. Her eyes are piercing, cold and ever dark, as they compliment her terracotta silk lips and defined jaw line. Her beauty is far from a tool of vanity as she shows on numerous occasions how she is willing to hide her face from the spying heavens above, blocking their sights so as all they can see is her hand woven reed, Kasa hat. To further add to her mystique Uzuki owns a wooden Zaika, a white heirloom mask of the clan she once called family. She rarely wears it, if at all, but the face of the accessory piece is littered in small cuts and abrasions, raising questions about the nature of her origins.

Uzuki's is quite willing to trade in the ever so popular kimono and yukata styles, opting for something a little more simple, modest, and discreet: a dark grey, cotton blouse that covers a silky white linen dress; a set of bamboo sandals; and a thick, brown haori jacket. Resting upon her left hip is a short, less than a foot in length, Tanto blade while strapped to the inner of her right forearm and concealed by her haori is a beautifully crafted Tessen fan.

_{Ｐ Ｅ Ｒ Ｓ Ｏ Ｎ Ａ Ｌ Ｉ Ｔ Ｙ}

To trust Uzuki and her ways is to willingly play your life and trust into her hands. She is a deceitful little bee; an analytical and cunning individual who skilfully lures her prey in with promises of lies and deceit before taking from them what they value most. With that said Uzuki is far from becoming the villain of such a tale as she is more of a survivalist than a monster, a woman who is willing to use those who she's betrayed to climb up higher and higher, to escape the drowning depths of her own sins.

Deep down inside Uzuki knows that throughout her endeavours the real person she is lying to the most—the one who she stole the life of and can never repay it back—is herself. Within her inner spirit resides an endless field of remorse and anguish, an emotion she covers with layers upon layers of lies and hate. The memories of her past are what drives her to live in such solitude, and what encourage her to follow a path least desired.

_{Ｓ Ｔ Ｒ Ｅ Ｎ Ｇ Ｔ Ｈ Ｓ}

❖ The Face of Deceit

Uzuki's strength lies not in raw power, but more in the art of trickery. The alluring Tessen she hypnotises her foes with is both a cunning tool of redirection and delirium, allowing her to strike hard and fast from the very shadows that stand in full view before the victim themselves. By combining the Zaika mask and her knowledge of Tessenjutsu, Uzuki is able to create an image that incites the seeds of fear and disarray into those who wish to become her prey.

❖ The Blade Not Seen

In a pinch Uzuki can rely on her Tanto knife, but what makes this woman dangerous is her knowledge in both basic martial arts and Tessenjutsu. The union of these two art forms places those who get too close to her at quite a disadvantage as they can never fully predict where or how Uzuki may strike.

❖ The Common Commoner

To blend into the crowd of civilians is a skill that Uzuki prides herself with. An element of stealth which leaves unsuspecting pursuers confused and disarrayed as she slips in and out of the shadows like a malevolent demon. The only traces she leaves behind are the torn memories of a smirking smile being eclipsed by the brim of her Kasa straw hat.

_{Ｗ Ｅ Ａ Ｋ Ｎ Ｅ Ｓ Ｓ Ｅ Ｓ}

❖ Klumsy Klutz

For the most unusual of reasons, and completely out of her own control, Uzuki has the unfathomable ability to trip, drop, and head-butt objects that a regular person would have no challenge in navigating around. Her antics will occasionally draw attention and thus her element of stealth isn't always the most reliable of skills.

❖ An Eye for the Prize

Uzuki is a kleptomaniac, and a woman who craves and lusts for the thrill of risking everything, all that worthless piece of treasure. Her clutching fingers have often landed her in mounds of trouble with a significant portion of her days spent evading the ones who happened to discover that their iron defences were foiled by such a selfish, alluring woman.

❖ The Abandoned Apprentice

There was once a stage in Uzuki's life where she was the apprentice to a local Monk, destined to learn the teachings of The Sacred Path, but her own detachment from the world—her needless selfishness—hindered this training. Years spent on this road to become an enlightened one and the only technique Uzuki had managed to understand was a basic disarming Ki-Strike. Even with this knowledge the use of her Ki-Strike is more of a risky gamble as there is no certainty that it will inflict any meaningful harm.

_{Ｔ Ｈ Ｅ Ｍ Ｅ}

♪♫ Character Theme Song ♪♫

NaNoWriMo Discussion

Hey folks,

Who's planning on engaging in that age old tradition? Got any tips, any fun stories? Share 'em here!

@Kalleth

I haven't entered one before and really want to at some point, but a tip I can give us to map out your story from beginning to end before you write. You have to fill out 50,000 words, writing almost 2,000 a day, and you need to feel confident that you know what you are going to write about.

The Book Club

Last was 3 years ago cause 2 years ago I was in Japan during that time and last year I had something on so I gave it a miss. This year I missed out as well but can't remember why. So honestly... Haven't been for a while.